On Sunday, November 15, police respond to reports of gunfire at Place de la Republique, where people had gathered at a memorial for the victims of Friday's terrorist attack. Believing there was a gunman among them, the crowd panicked, but it turned out to be a false alarm. (Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty)

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Features » November 16, 2015

Slavoj Zizek: In the Wake of Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots

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There should be no “deeper understanding” of the ISIS terrorists (in the sense of “their deplorable acts are nonetheless reactions to European brutal interventions”); they should be characterized as what they are: the Islamo-Fascist counterpart of the European anti-immigrant racists.

In the first half of 2015, Europe was preoccupied by radical emancipatory movements (Syriza and Podemos), while in the second half the attention shifted to the “humanitarian” topic of the refugees. Class struggle was literally repressed and replaced by the liberal-cultural topic of tolerance and solidarity. With the Paris terror killings on Friday, November 13, even this topic (which still refers to large socio-economic issues) is now eclipsed by the simple opposition of all democratic forces caught in a merciless war with forces of terror.

It is easy to imagine what will follow: paranoiac search for ISIS agents among the refugees. (Media already gleefully reported that two of the terrorists entered Europe through Greece as refugees.) The greatest victims of the Paris terror attacks will be refugees themselves, and the true winners, behind the platitudes in the style of je suis Paris, will be simply the partisans of total war on both sides. This is how we should really condemn the Paris killings: not just to engage in shows of anti-terrorist solidarity but to insist on the simple cui bono (for whose benefit?) question.

There should be no “deeper understanding” of the ISIS terrorists (in the sense of “their deplorable acts are nonetheless reactions to European brutal interventions”); they should be characterized as what they are: the Islamo-Fascist counterpart of the European anti-immigrant racists—the two are the two sides of the same coin. Let’s bring class struggle back—and the only way to do it is to insist on global solidarity of the exploited.

The deadlock that global capitalism finds itself in is more and more palpable. How to break out of it? Fredric Jameson recently proposed global militarization of society as a mode of emancipation: Democratically motivated grassroots movements are seemingly doomed to failure, so perhaps it’s best to break global capitalism’s vicious cycle through “militarization,” which means suspending the power of self-regulating economies. Perhaps the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe provides an opportunity to test this option.

It is at least clear that what is needed to stop the chaos is large-scale coordination and organization, which includes but is not limited to: reception centers near to the crisis (Turkey, Lebanon, the Libyan coast), transportation of those granted entrance to European way stations, and their redistribution to potential settlements. The military is the only agent that can do such a big task in an organized way. To claim that such a role for the military smells of a state of emergency is redundant. When you have tens of thousands of people passing through densely populated areas without organization you have an emergency state—and it is in a state of emergency that parts of Europe are right now. Therefore, it is madness to think that such a process can be left to unwind freely. If nothing else, refugees need provisions and medical care.

Taking control of the refugee crisis will mean breaking leftist taboos.

For instance, the right to “free movement” should be limited, if for no other reason than the fact that it doesn’t exist among the refugees, whose freedom of movement is already dependent on their class. Thus, the criteria of acceptance and settlement have to be formulated in a clear and explicit way—whom and how many to accept, where to relocate them, etc. The art here is to find the middle road between following the desires of the refugees (taking into account their wish to move to countries where they already have relatives, etc.) and the capacities of different countries.

Another taboo we must address concerns norms and rules. It is a fact that most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western European notions of human rights. Tolerance as a solution (mutual respect of each other’s sensitivities) obviously doesn’t work: fundamentalist Muslims find it impossible to bear our blasphemous images and reckless humor, which we consider a part of our freedoms. Western liberals, likewise, find it impossible to bear many practices of Muslim culture.

In short, things explode when members of a religious community consider the very way of life of another community as blasphemous or injurious, whether or not it constitutes a direct attack on their religion. This is the case when Muslim extremists attack gays and lesbians in the Netherlands and Germany, and it is the case when traditional French citizens view a woman covered by a burka as an attack on their French identity, which is exactly why they find it impossible to remain silent when they encounter a covered woman in their midst.

To curb this propensity, one has to do two things. First, formulate a minimum set of norms obligatory for everyone that includes religious freedom, protection of individual freedom against group pressure, the rights of women, etc.—without fear that such norms will appear “Eurocentric.” Second, within these limits, unconditionally insist on the tolerance of different ways of life. And if norms and communication don’t work, then the force of law should be applied in all its forms.

Another taboo that must be overcome involves the equation of any reference to the European emancipatory legacy to cultural imperialism and racism. In spite of the (partial) responsibility of Europe for the situation from which refugees are fleeing, the time has come to drop leftist mantras critiquing Eurocentrism.

The lessons of the post-9/11 world are that the Francis Fukuyama dream of global liberal democracy is at an end and that, at the level of the world economy, corporate capitalism has triumphed worldwide. In fact, the Third World nations that embrace this world order are those now growing at a spectacular rate. The mask of cultural diversity is sustained by the actual universalism of global capital; even better if global capitalism’s political supplement relies on so-called “Asian values.”

Global capitalism has no problem in accommodating itself to a plurality of local religions, cultures and traditions. So the irony of anti-Eurocentrism is that, on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs Western cultural values in order to smoothly function. In short, one tends to reject Western cultural values at the very time when, critically reinterpreted, many of those values (egalitarianism, fundamental rights, freedom of the press, the welfare-state, etc.) can serve as a weapon against capitalist globalization. Did we already forget that the entire idea of Communist emancipation as envisaged by Marx is a thoroughly “Eurocentric” one?

The next taboo worth leaving behind is that any critique of the Islamic right is an example of “Islamophobia.” Enough of this pathological fear of many Western liberal leftists who worry about being deemed guilty of Islamophobia. For example, Salman Rushdie was denounced for unnecessarily provoking Muslims and thus (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death. The result of such a stance is what one can expect in such cases: The more Western liberal leftists wallow in their guilt, the more they are accused by Muslim fundamentalists of being hypocrites who try to conceal their hatred of Islam.

This constellation perfectly reproduces the paradox of the superego: The more you obey what the pseudo-moral agency that the sadistic and primitive superego demands of you, the more guilty you are of moral masochism and identification with the aggressor. Thus, it is as if the more you tolerate Islamic fundamentalism, the stronger its pressure on you will be.

And one can be sure that the same holds for the influx of immigrants: The more Western Europe will be open to them, the more it will be made to feel guilty that it did not accept even more of them. There will never be enough of them. And with those who are here, the more tolerance one displays towards their way of life, the more one will be made guilty for not practicing enough tolerance.

The political economy of the refugees: Global capitalism and military intervention

As a long-term strategy, we should focus on what one cannot but call the “political economy of refugees,” which means focusing on the ultimate causes underlying the dynamics of global capitalism and military interventions. The ongoing disorder should be treated as the true face of the New World Order. Consider the food crisis now plaguing the “developing” world. None other than Bill Clinton made it clear in his comments, at a 2008 UN gathering marking World Food Day, that the food crisis in many Third World countries cannot be put on the usual suspects like corruption, inefficiency and state interventionism—the crisis is directly dependent on the globalization of agriculture. The gist of Clinton’s speech was that today’s global food crisis shows how “we all blew it, including me when I was president,” by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world’s poor.

Clinton was very clear in putting blame not on individual states or governments but on U.S. and EU long-term global policies carried out for decades by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international economic institutions. Such policies pressured African and Asian countries into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs. This allowed the best land to be used for export crops, which effectively compromised the countries’ self-sufficiency. The integration of local agriculture into global economy was the result of such “structural adjustments,” and the effect was devastating: Farmers were thrown out of their land and pushed into slums fitted for sweat-shop labor, while countries had to rely more and more on imported food. In this way, they are kept in postcolonial dependence and became more and more vulnerable to market fluctuations. For instance, grain prices skyrocketed last year in countries like Haiti and Ethiopia, both of which export crops for biofuel and consequently starve their populations.

In order to approach these problems properly, one will have to invent new forms of large-scale collective action; neither the standard state intervention nor the much-praised local self-organization can do the job. If the problem will not be solved, one should seriously consider that we are approaching a new era of apartheid in which secluded, resource-abundant parts of the world will be separated from the starved-and-permanently-at-war parts. What should people in Haiti and other places with food shortages do? Do they not have the full right to violently rebel? Or, to become refugees? Despite all the critiques of economic neo-colonialism, we are still not fully aware of the devastating effects of the global market on many local economies.

As for the open (and not-so-open) military interventions, the results have been told often enough: failed states. No refugees without ISIS and no ISIS without the U.S. occupation of Iraq, etc. In a gloomy prophecy made before his death, Col. Muammar Gaddafi said: “Now listen you, people of NATO. You’re bombing a wall, which stood in the way of African migration to Europe and in the way of al Qaeda terrorists. This wall was Libya. You’re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa.” Was he not stating the obvious?

The Russian story, which basically elaborates Gaddafi, has its element of truth, in spite of the obvious taste of pasta putinesca. Boris Dolgov of the Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation told TASS:

That the refugee crisis is an outcome of US-European policies is clear to the naked eye. … The destruction of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and attempts to topple Bashar Assad in Syria with the hands of Islamic radicals—that’s what EU and US policies are all about, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees are a result of that policy.

Similarly, Irina Zvyagelskaya, of the oriental studies department at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, told TASS:

The civil war in Syria and tensions in Iraq and Libya keep fueling the flow of migrants, but that is not the only cause. I agree with those who see the current events as a trend towards another mass resettlement of peoples, which leave the weaker countries with ineffective economies. There are systemic problems that cause people to abandon their homes and take to the road. And the liberal European legislation allows many of them to not only stay in Europe, but also to live there on social benefits without seeking employment.

And Yevgeny Grishkovets, the Russian author, playwright and stage director, writing in in his blog agrees:

These people are exhausted, angry and humiliated. They have no idea of European values, lifestyles and traditions, multiculturalism or tolerance. They will never agree to abide by European laws. … They will never feel grateful to the people whose countries they have managed to get into with such problems, because the very same states first turned their own home countries into a bloodbath. … Angela Merkel vows modern German society and Europe are prepared for problems. … That’s a lie and nonsense!

However, while there is some general truth in all this, one should not jump from this generality to the empirical fact of refugees flowing into Europe and simply accept full responsibility. The responsibility is shared. First, Turkey is playing a well-planned political game (officially fighting ISIS but effectively bombing the Kurds who are really fighting ISIS). Then we have the class division in the Arab world itself (the ultra-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Emirates accepting almost no refugees). And what about Iraq with its tens of billions of oil reserves? How, out of all this mess, does there emerge a flow of refugees?

What we do know is that a complex economy of refugee transportation is making millions upon millions of dollars profit. Who is financing it? Streamlining it? Where are the European intelligence services? Are they exploring this dark netherworld? The fact that refugees are in a desperate situation in no way excludes the fact that their flow into Europe is part of a well-planned project.

Sure, Norway exists

Let me address my so-called leftist critics who find my breaking of the above-mentioned taboos in articles published in the London Review of Books and In These Times problematic. Nick Riemer, writing in Jacobin, condemns the “reactionary nonsense” I am “promoting”:

It should be obvious to Zizek that the West can’t intervene militarily in a way that avoids the “neocolonial traps of the recent past.” Refugees, for their part, aren’t wayfarers on someone else’s soil, present only under sufferance and, as such, the objects of “hospitality.” Regardless of the customs they bring with them, they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe—a pluralism entirely ignored in Zizek’s astonishing reference to a unique “Western European way of life.”

The claim that underlies this view is much stronger than Alain Badiou's qui est ici est d'ici (those who are here are from here)—it is more something like qui veut venir ici est d'ici (those who want to come here are from here). But even if we accept it, it is Riemer who entirely ignores the point of my remark: of course “they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe,” but which exactly are these “same rights” refugees should enjoy?

While Europe is now fighting for full gay and woman's rights (the right to abortion, the rights of same-sex married couples, etc.), should these rights also be extended to gays and women among the refugees even if they are in conflicts with “the customs they bring with them” (as they often obviously are)? And this aspect should in no way be dismissed as marginal: from Boko Haram to Robert Mugabe to Vladimir Putin, the anti-colonialist critique of the West more and more appears as the rejection of the Western “sexual” confusion, and as the demand for returning to the traditional sexual hierarchy.

I am, of course, well aware how the immediate export of Western feminism and individual human rights can serve as a tool of ideological and economic neocolonialism (we all remember how some American feminists supported the U.S. intervention in Iraq as a way to liberate women there, while the result is exactly the opposite). But I absolutely reject to draw from this the conclusion that the Western Left should make here a “strategic compromise,” and silently tolerate “customs” of humiliating women and gays on behalf of the “greater” anti-imperialist struggle.

Along with Jürgen Habermas and Peter Singer, Reimer then accuses me of endorsing “an elitist vision of politics—the enlightened political class versus a racist and ignorant population.” When I read this, I again could not believe my eyes! As if I hadn’t written pages and pages on criticizing precisely European liberal political elite! As for “racist and ignorant population,” we stumble here upon another Leftist taboo: Yes, unfortunately, large parts of the working class in Euroope is racist and anti-immigrant, a fact which should in no way be dismissed as as the result of the manipulation of an essentially “progressive” working class.

Riemer's final critique is: “Zizek’s fantasy that refugees pose a threat to the ‘Western’ ‘way of life’ that may be remedied by better kinds of military and economic ‘intervention’ abroad is the clearest illustration of how the categories in which analysis is conducted can open the door to reaction.” As for the danger of military interventions, I am well aware of it, and I also consider a justified intervention almost impossible. But when I speak of the necessity of radical economic change, I of course do not aim at some kind of “economic intervention” in parallel with military intervention, but of a thorough radical transformation of global capitalism that should begin in the developed West itself. Every authentic leftist knows that this is the only true solution—without it, the developed West will continue to devastate Third World countries, and with fanfare mercifully take care of their poor.

Along similar lines, Sam Kriss’ critique is especially interesting in that he also accuses me of not being a true Lacanian:

It’s even possible to argue that the migrants are more European than Europe itself. Zizek mocks the utopian desire for a Norway that doesn’t exist, and insists that migrants should stay where they’re sent. (It doesn’t seem to occur to him that those trying to reach a certain country might have family members already there, or be able to speak the language, that it’s driven precisely by a desire to integrate. But also—isn’t this precisely the operation of the objet petit a [the unatainable object of desire] ? What kind of Lacanian tells someone that they should effectively abandon their desire for something just because it’s not attainable? Or are migrants not worthy of the luxury of an unconscious mind?) In Calais, migrants trying to reach the United Kingdom protested against their conditions with placards demanding “freedom of movement for all.” Unlike racial or gender equality, the free movement of peoples across national borders is a supposedly universal European value that has actually been implemented—but, of course, only for Europeans. These protesters put the lie to any claim on the part of Europe to be upholding universal values. Zizek can only articulate the European “way of life” in terms of vague and transcendent generalities, but here it is in living flesh. If the challenge of migration is one of European universalism against backwards and repressive particularism, then the particularism is entirely on the part of Europe. … “The Non-Existence of Norway” isn’t a theoretical analysis, it’s a gentle word of heartfelt advice in the ear of the European bureaucratic class, one that’s not particularly interested in Lacan. For all his insistence on “radical economic change,” this epistolary structure ensures that such a change is, for the time being, entirely off the table. Hence the insistence that there is not, and can never be, a Norway. The capitalists do not intend to make one, and Zizek does not intend to address those that could. To which the Marxist response must be that if there is no Norway, then we’ll have to build it ourselves.

“Migrants are more European than Europe itself” is an old leftist thesis that I too have often used, but one has to be specific about what it means. In my critic’s reading, it means migrants actualize the principle—“freedom of movement for all”—more seriously than Europe. But, again, one has to be precise here. There is “freedom of movement” in the sense of freedom to travel, and the more radical “freedom of movement” in the sense of the freedom to settle in whatever country I want. But the axiom that sustains the refugees in Calais is not just the freedom to travel, but something more like, “Everyone has the right to settle in any other part of the world, and the country they move into has to provide for them.” The EU guarantees (sort of, more or less) this right for its members and to demand the globalization of this right equals the demand to expand the EU to the entire world.

The actualization of this freedom presupposes nothing less than a radical socio-economic revolution. Why? New forms of apartheid are emerging. In our global world, commodities circulate freely but not people. Discourse around porous walls and the threat of inundating foreigners are an inherent index of what is false about capitalist globalization. It is as if the refugees want to extend the free, global circulation of commodities to people as well, but this is presently impossible due to the limitations imposed by global capitalism.

From the Marxist standpoint, “freedom of movement” relates to the need of capital for a “free” labor force—millions torn out of their communal life to be employed in sweatshops. The universe of capital relates to individual freedom of movement in an inherently contradictory way: Capitalism needs “free” individuals as cheap labor forces, but it simultaneously needs to control their movement since it cannot afford the same freedoms and rights for all people.

Is demanding radical freedom of movement, precisely because it does not exist within the existing order, a good starting point for the struggle? My critic admits the impossibility of the refugee’s demand, yet he affirms it on account of its very impossibility—all the while accusing me of a non-Lacanian, vulgar pragmatism. The part about objet a as impossible, etc., is simply ridiculous, theoretical nonsense. The “Norway” I refer to is not objet a but a fantasy. Refugees who want to reach Norway present an exemplary case of ideological fantasy—a fantasy-formation that obfuscates the inherent antagonisms. Many of the refugees want to have a cake and eat it: They basically expect the best of the Western welfare-state while retaining their specific way of life, though in some of its key features their way of life is incompatible with the ideological foundations of the Western welfare-state.

Germany likes to emphasize the need to integrate the refugees culturally and socially. However—and here is another taboo to be broken—how many of the refugees really want to be integrated? What if the obstacle to integration is not simply Western racism? (Incidentally, fidelity to one’s objet a in no way guarantees authenticity of desire—even a brief perusal of Mein Kampf makes it clear that Jews were Hitler’s objet a, and he certainly remained faithful to the project of their annihilation.) This is what is wrong with the claim “if there is no Norway, then we’ll have to build it ourselves”—yes, but it will not be the fantasmic “Norway” refugees are dreaming about.

Schuller's blog post even attributes a statement to me that, of course, I never made: “I no longer know any classes, only Europeans.” What we must do is move beyond the cliché of refugees as proletarians with “nothing to lose but their chains” invading bourgeois Europe: There are class divisions in Europe as well as in the Middle East, and the key question is how these different class dynamics interact.

This brings us to the reproach that, while I call for a critique of the dark underside of the Islamic right, I remain silent about the dark underside of the European world: “And what about Crosses in the school? What about the church tax? What about the diverse Christian sects with absurd moral ideas? What about the Christians who announce that gays will be barbecued in hell?” This is a weird reproach—the parallel between Christian and Muslim fundamentalism is a topic over-analyzed in our media (as well as in my books).

Be that as it may, let’s recall what happened in Rotherham, England: At least 1,400 children were subjected to brutal sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013; children as young as 11 were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities, beaten and intimidated; “doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone, as the official report put it.” There had been three previous inquiries into these goings on that led to nothing. One inquiry team noted a fear among council staff that they’d be labelled “racist” if they pursued the matter. Why? The perpetrators were almost exclusively members of Pakistani gangs and their victims—referred by the perpetrators as “white trash”—were white schoolgirls.

Reactions were predictable. Mostly through generalization, many on the Left resorted to all possible strategies in order to blur facts. Exhibiting political correctness at its worst, in two Guardian articles the perpetrators were vaguely designated as “Asians.” Claims were made. This wasn’t about ethnicity and religion but rather about domination of man over women. Who are we with our church pedophilia and Jimmy Saville to adopt a high moral ground against a victimized minority? Can one imagine a more effective way to open up the field to UKIP and other anti-immigrant populists who exploit the worries of ordinary people?

What is not acknowledge is that such anti-racism is in effect a form of covert racism since it condescendingly treats Pakistanis as morally inferior beings who should not be held to normal human standards.

In order to break out of this deadlock, one should begin with the very parallel between the Rotherham events and pedophilia within the Catholic Church. In both cases, we are dealing with organized—ritualized even—collective activity. In the case of Rotherham, another parallel may be even more pertinent. One of the terrifying effects of the non-contemporaneity of different levels of social life is the rise of systematic violence against women. Violence that is specific to a certain social context is not random violence but systematic—it follows a pattern and transmits a clear message. While we were right to be terrified at the gang rapes in India, as Arundhati Roy pointed out, the cause of the unanimous moral reaction was that the rapists were poor and from lower strata. Nonetheless, the world-wide echo of violence against women is suspicious, so, perhaps, it would be worthwhile to widen our perception and include other similar phenomena.

The serial killings of women in Ciudad Juarez at the border are not just private pathologies, but a ritualized activity, part of the subculture of local gangs and directed at single young women working in new assembling factories. These murders are clear cases of macho reaction to the new class of independent working women: The social dislocation due to fast industrialization and modernization provokes a brutal reaction in males who experience this development as a threat. And the crucial feature in all these cases is that the criminally violent act is not a spontaneous outburst of raw brutal energy which breaks the chains of civilized customs, but something learned, externally imposed, ritualized and part of the collective symbolic substance of a community. What is repressed for the “innocent” public gaze is not the cruel brutality of the act, but precisely its “cultural,” ritualistic character as symbolic custom.

The same perverted social-ritual logic is at work when Catholic Church representatives insist that these intercontinental cases of pedophilia, deplorable as they are, are the Church’s internal, problem, and then display great reluctance to collaborate with police in their investigation. Church reps are, in a way, right. The pedophilia of Catholic priests is not something that merely concerns the persons who accidentally (read: privately) happened to choose the profession of a priest. It is a phenomenon that concerns the Catholic Church as an institution, and is inscribed into its very functioning as a socio-symbolic institution. It does not concern the “private” unconscious of individuals, but the “unconscious” of the institution itself. It is not something that happens because the institution has to accommodate itself to the pathological realities of libidinal life in order to survive, but something that the institution itself needs in order to reproduce itself. One can well imagine a “straight” (not pedophiliac) priest who, after years of service, gets involved in pedophilia because the very logic of the institution seduces him into it. Such an institutional unconscious designates the disavowed underside that, precisely as disavowed, sustains the public institution. (In the U.S. military, this underside consists of the obscene sexualized hazing rituals that help sustain the group solidarity.) In other words, it is not simply that, for conformist reasons, the Church tries to hush up the embarrassing pedophilic scandals: In defending itself, the Church defends its innermost obscene secret. Identifying oneself with this secret side is key for the very identity of a Christian priest: If a priest seriously (not just rhetorically) denounces these scandals he thereby excludes himself from the ecclesiastic community. He is no longer “one of us.” Similarly, when a US southerner in the 1920s denounced the KKK to the police he excluded himself from his community by betraying its fundamental solidarity.

We should approach the Rotherham events in exactly the same way since we are dealing with the “political unconscious” of Pakistani Muslim youth. The kind of violence at work is not chaotic violence but ritualized violence with precise ideological contours. A youth group, which experiences itself as marginalized and subordinated, took revenge at low-class girls of the predominant group. It is fully legitimate to raise the question of whether there are features in their religion and culture which open up the space for brutality against women without blaming Islam as such (which is in itself no more misogynistic than Christianity). In many Islamic countries and communities one can observe consonance between violence against women, the subordination of women and their exclusion from public life.

Among many fundamentalist groups and movements strict imposition of hierarchical sexual difference is at the very top of their agenda. But we should simply apply the same criteria on both (Christian and Islamic fundamentalist) sides, without fear of admitting that our liberal-secular critique of fundamentalism is also stained by falsity.

Critique of religious fundamentalism in Europe and the United States is an old topic with endless variation. The very pervasiveness of the self-satisfactory way that the liberal intelligentsia make fun of fundamentalists covers up the true problem, which is its hidden class dimension. The counterpart of this “making-fun-of” is the pathetic solidarity with the refugees and the no less false and pathetic self-humiliation of our self-admonition. The real task is to build bridges between “our” and “their” working classes. Without this unity (which includes the critique and self-critique of both sides) class struggle proper regresses into a clash of civilizations. That’s why yet another taboo should be left behind.

The worries and cares of so-called ordinary people affected by the refugees are oft dismissed as an expression of racist prejudices if not outright neo-Fascism. Should we really allow PEGIDA & company to be the only way open to them?

Interestingly, the same motif underlies the “radical” leftist critique of Bernie Sanders: What bothers his critics is precisely his close contact with small farmers and other working people in Vermont, who usually give their electoral support to Republican conservatives. Sanders is ready to listen to their worries and cares, not dismiss them as racist white trash.

Where does the threat come from?

Listening to ordinary people’s worries, of course, in no way implies that one should accept the basic premise of their stance—the idea that threats to their way of life comes from outside, from foreigners, from “the other.” The task is rather to teach them to recognize their own responsibility for their future. To explain this point, let’s take an example from another part of the world.

Udi Aloni’s new film Junction 48 (upcoming in 2016) deals with the difficult predicament of young “Israeli Palestinians” (Palestinians descended from the families that remained in Israel after 1949), whose everyday life involves a continuous struggle at two fronts—against Israeli state oppression as well as fundamentalist pressures from within their own community. The main role is played by Tamer Nafar, a well-known Israeli-Palestinian rapper, who, in his music, mocks the tradition of the “honor killing” of Palestinian girls by their Palestinian families. A strange thing happened to Nafar during a recent visit to the United States. At UCLA after Nafar performed his song protesting “honor killings,” some anti-Zionist students reproached him for promoting the Zionist view of Palestinians as barbaric primitives. They added that, if there are any honor killings, Israel is responsible for them since the Israeli occupation keeps Palestinians in primitive, debilitating conditions. Here is Nafar’s dignified reply: “When you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors. I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood.”

An important aspect of Nafar’s position is that he is not just protecting Palestinian girls from family terror he is allowing them to fight for themselves—to take the risk. At the end of Aloni’s film, after the girl decides to perform at a concert against her family’s wishes, and the film ends in a dark premonition of honor killing.

In Spike Lee’s film on Malcolm Xthere is a wonderful detail: After Malcolm X gives a talk at a college, a white student girl approaches him and asks him what she can do to help the black struggle. He answers: “Nothing.” The point of this answer is not that whites should just do nothing. Instead, they should first accept that black liberation should be the work of the blacks themselves, not something bestowed on them as a gift by the good white liberals. Only on the basis of this acceptance can they do something to help blacks. Therein resides Nafar’s point: Palestinians do not need the patronizing help of Western liberals, and they need even less the silence about “honor killing” as part of the Western Left’s “respect” for Palestinian way of life. The imposition of Western values as universal human rights and the respect for different cultures, independent of the horrors sometimes apart of these cultures, are two sides of the same ideological mystification.

In order to really undermine homeland xenophobia against foreign threats, one should reject its very presupposition, namely that every ethnic group has its own proper “Nativia.” On Sept. 7, 2015, Sarah Palin gave an interview to Fox News with Fox and Friends host Steve Doocey:

“I love immigrants. But like Donald Trump, I just think we have too darn many in this country. Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans—they’re changing up the cultural mix in the United States away from what it used to be in the days of our Founding Fathers. I think we should go to some of these groups and just ask politely: “Would you mind going home? Would you mind giving us our country back?”

“Sarah you know I love you,“ Doocey interjected, “And I think that’s a great idea with regards to Mexicans. But where are the Native Americans supposed to go? They don’t really have a place to go back to do they?”

Sarah replied: “Well I think they should go back to Nativia or wherever they came from. The liberal media treats Native Americans like they’re gods. As if they just have some sort of automatic right to be in this country. But I say if they can’t learn to get off those horses and start speaking American, then they should be sent home too.”

Unfortunately, we immediately learned that this story—too good to be true—was a hoax brilliantly performed by Daily Currant. However, as they say, “Even if it’s not true, it is well conceived.” In its ridiculous nature, it brought out the hidden fantasy that sustains the anti-immigrant vision: In today’s chaotic global world there is a “Nativia“ to which people who bother us properly belong. This vision was realized in apartheid South Africa in the form of Bantustans—territories set aside for black inhabitants. South African whites created the Bantustans with the idea of making them independent, thereby ensuring that black South Africans would loose their citizenship rights in the remaining white-controlled areas of South Africa. Although Bantustans were defined as the “original homes“ of the black peoples of South Africa, different black groups were allocated to their homelands in a brutally arbitrary way. Bantustans amounted to 13 percent of the country’s land carefully selected not to contain any important mineral reserves—the resource-rich remainder of the country would then be in the hands of the white population. The Black Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 formally designated all black South Africans as citizens of the homelands, even if they lived in “white South Africa,” and cancelled their South African citizenship. From the standpoint of apartheid, this solution was ideal: Whites possessed most of the land while blacks were proclaimed foreigners in their own country and treated as guest workers who could, at any point, be deported back to their “homeland.” What cannot but strike the eye is the artificial nature of this entire process. Black groups were suddenly told that an unattractive and infertile piece of land was their “true home.” And today, even if a Palestinian state were to emerge on the West Bank, would it not be precisely such a Bantustan, whose formal ”independence” would serve the purpose of liberating the Israeli government from any responsibility for the welfare of the people living there.

But we should also add to this insight that the multiculturalist or anti-colonialist’s defense of different “ways of life” is also false. Such defenses cover up the antagonisms within each of these particular ways of life by justifying acts of brutality, sexism and racism as expressions of a particular way of life that we have no right to measure with foreign, i.e. Western values. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s talk at the UN general assembly is a typical anti-colonialist defense used as a justification for brutal homophobia:

Respecting and upholding human rights is the obligation of all states, and is enshrined in the United Nations charter. Nowhere does the charter arrogate the right to some to sit in judgment over others, in carrying out this universal obligation. In that regard, we reject the politicization of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimize those who dare think and act independently of the self-anointed prefects of our time. We equally reject attempts to prescribe “new rights” that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. We are not gays! Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double-standards will not.

What can Mugabe’s emphatic claim “We are not gays!” mean with regard to the fact that, for certain, there are many gays also in Zimbabwe? It means, of course, that gays are reduced to an oppressed minority whose acts are often directly criminalized. But one can understand the underlying logic: The gay movement is perceived as the cultural impact of globalization and yet another way globalization undermines traditional social and cultural forms such that the struggle against gays appears as an aspect of the anti-colonial struggle.

Does the same not hold for, say, Boko Haram? For certain Muslims the liberation of women appears as the most visible feature of the destructive cultural impact of capitalist modernization. Therefore, Boko Haram, which can be roughly and descriptively translated as “Western education [of women specifically] is forbidden,” can perceive itself as a way of fighting the destructive impact of modernization when it imposes hierarchic regulation between the two sexes.

The enigma is thus: Why do Muslim extremists, who were undoubtedly exposed to exploitation, domination, and other destructive and humiliating aspects of colonialism, target what is (for us, at least) the best part of the Western legacy—our egalitarianism and personal freedoms? The obvious answer could be that their target is well-chosen: What makes the liberal West so unbearable is that they not only practice exploitation and violent domination, but that, to add insult to injury, they present this brutal reality in the guise of its opposite—of freedom, equality and democracy.

Mugabe’s regressive defense of particular ways of life finds its mirror-image in what Viktor Orban, the rightwing Prime Minister of Hungary, is doing. On Sept. 3, 2015, he justified closing off the border with Serbia as an act of defending Christian Europe against invading Muslims. This was the same Orban who, back in July 2012, said that in Central Europe a new economic system must be built: “And let us hope that God will help us and we will not have to invent a new type of political system instead of democracy that would need to be introduced for the sake of economic survival. … Cooperation is a question of force, not of intention. Perhaps there are countries where things don’t work that way, for example in the Scandinavian countries, but such a half-Asiatic rag-tag people as we are can unite only if there is force.”

The irony of these lines was not lost on some old Hungarian dissidents: When the Soviet army moved into Budapest to crush the 1956 anti-Communist uprising the message repeatedly sent by the beleaguered Hungarian leaders to the West was: “We are defending Europe here.” (Against the Asiatic Communists, of course.) Now, after Communism collapsed, the Christian-conservative government paints as its main enemy Western multi-cultural consumerist liberal democracy for which today’s Western Europe stands, and calls for a new more organic communitarian order to replace the “turbulent” liberal democracy of the last two decades. Orban already expressed his sympathies towards cases of “capitalism with Asian values” like Putin’s Russia, so if the European pressure on Orban continues we can easily imagine him sending the message to the East: “We are defending Asia here!“ (And, to add an ironic twist, are, from the West European racist perspective, today’s Hungarians not descendants of the early medieval Huns—Attila is even today a popular Hungarian name.)

Is there a contradiction between these two Orbans: Orban the friend of Putin who resents the liberal-democratic West and Orban the defender of Christian Europe? There is not. The two faces of Orban provide the proof (if needed) that the principal threat to Europe is not Muslim immigration but its anti-immigrant, populist defenders.

So what if Europe should accept the paradox that its democratic openness is based on exclusion. In other words, there is “no freedom for the enemies of freedom,” as Robespierre put it long ago? In principle, this is, of course, true, but it is here that one has to be very specific. In a way, Norway’s mass murderer Andres Breivik was right in his choice of target: He didn’t attack the foreigners but those within his own community who were too tolerant towards intruding foreigners. The problem is not foreigners—it is our own (European) identity.

Although the ongoing crisis of the European Union appears as a crisis of economy and finances, it is in its fundamental dimension an ideological-political crisis. The failure of referendums concerning the EU constitution a couple of years ago gave a clear signal that voters perceived the European Union as a “technocratic” economic union, lacking any vision which could mobilize people. Till the recent wave of protests from Greece to Spain, the only ideology able to mobilize people has been the anti-immigrant defense of Europe.

There is an idea circulating in the underground of the disappointed radical Left that is a softer reiteration of the predilection for terrorism in the aftermath of the 1968 movement: the crazy idea that only a radical catastrophe (preferably an ecological one) can awaken masses and thus give a new impetus to radical emancipation. The latest version of this idea relates to the refugees: only an influx of a really large number of refugees (and their disappointment since, obviously, Europe will not be able to satisfy their expectations) can revitalize the European radical Left.

I find this line of thought obscene: notwithstanding the fact that such a development would for sure give an immense boost to anti-immigrant brutality, the truly crazy aspect of this idea is the project to fill in the gap of the missing radical proletarians by importing them from abroad, so that we will get the revolution by means of an imported revolutionary agent.

This, of course, in no way entails that we should content ourselves with liberal reformism. Many leftist liberals (like Habermas) who bemoan the ongoing decline of the EU seem to idealize its past: The “democratic” EU the loss of which they bemoan never existed. Recent EU policies, such as those imposing austerity on Greece, are just a desperate attempt to make Europe fit for new global capitalism. The usual Left-liberal critique of the EU—it’s basically OK, except for a “democratic deficit”— betrays the same naivety as the critics of ex-Communist countries who basically supported them, except for the complaint about the lack of democracy: In both cases, the “democratic deficit” is and was a necessary part of the global structure.

But here, I am even more of a skeptical pessimist. When I was recently answering questions from the readers of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest daily, about the refugee crisis, the question that attracted by far the most attention concerned precisely democracy, but with a rightist-populist twist: When Angela Merkel made her famous public appeal inviting hundreds of thousands into Germany, which was her democratic legitimization? What gave her the right to bring such a radical change to German life without democratic consultation? My point here, of course, is not to support anti-immigrant populists, but to clearly point out the limits of democratic legitimization. The same goes for those who advocate radical opening of the borders: Are they aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals suspension of—in effect imposing a gigantic change in a country’s status quo without democratic consultation of its population? (Their answer would have been, of course, that refugees should also be given the right to vote—but this is clearly not enough, since this is a measure that can only happen after refugees are already integrated into the political system of a country.) A similar problem arises with the calls for transparency of the EU decisions: what I fear is that, since in many countries the majority of the public was against the Greek debt reduction, rendering EU negotiations public would make representatives of these countries advocate even tougher measures against Greece.

We encounter here the old problem: What happens to democracy when the majority is inclined to vote for racist and sexist laws? I am not afraid to conclude: Emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal-democratic procedures of legitimization. No, people quite often do NOT know what they want, or do not want what they know, or they simply want the wrong thing. There is no simple shortcut here.

We definitely live in interesting times.

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Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the the Institute for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. He has also been a visiting professor at more than 10 universities around the world. Žižek is the author of many books, including Living in the End Times, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously and Trouble in Paradise.

What does a Slav know of Western values? Of course, I forgot, Western values is just a code word for white. In this way, the untermenschen get's to join the ubermenschen by mere contingency of genetic "inheritance". The fool Zizek would be well served by looking back 70 years or so and remembering exactly how people like him have faired under Western values. Why, he doesn't even need to do go back that far. How did that whole transition from Communism to Capitalism go again? When you look past the propaganda of the Financial Times, the Heritage Foundation and other bastions of Western "values", you'll see that Eastern Europe didn't do that well. Eastern Europe, a little piece of the Third World conveniently located close to the Imperial metropoles of London, Berlin, and Paris, with cheap labour, women for the trafficking and a population deluded into thinking that their white skin makes a difference and that historical fictions like Western Values include them. In what way is this reactionary idiot a Marxist again? Chomsky was too soft on him, classifying him as a poseur, he's just a dribbling idiot.

Posted by Adam Smith on 2016-05-10 08:25:20

i dont know who you are, but i know you dont know any muslims, and obviously pretty racist

Posted by TwatteringTaha on 2016-04-26 08:39:25

Human Rights Tradition

As my readers would surely know (which is to say if I had any), I am attracted to, and like employ or deploy, or whatever you say—-I have used the word “phony.” Not sure why I would do that, but I do.

So, I’ll not speculate on it. What I think is that people are “phonies.” I really, really, strongly get this notion. Maybe I am only partially correct, but it comes to my mind readily. Maybe when the entire government, the private sector, and all the people have been “captured” by a phony system – a system that is phony – the result is not some simple, manageable phoniness.

It isn’t a Wal-Mart ad in other words. Phoniness would be fine if that was all there is to it. We would have a beautiful phony world, where twelve year-old boys bite apples, and a person would simply need to chill out, fit in, and get on with the beautiful system.

That’s not exactly it. How could phoniness actually hurt anybody? Not sure. I don’t really know.

But to say that it would hurt persons, or the earth itself, is “radical.” A liberal would say, “Well, all we need is a little more ‘human rights’ tradition.” RIght, Zizek?

Posted by jacob Silverman on 2016-04-16 12:00:27

Sophomoric = you don't want to make an argument.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2016-02-24 17:46:12

EXACTLY. And who reminds us Marx is western. Period.

Posted by Kristopher Irizarry on 2016-01-27 00:31:00

A lot of us brown people were raised with European values. Our parents migrated to reject values of backward looking cultures and to provide freedom and possibility for their children. They didn't migrate to Pakistan or Syria to do that, they migrated to Canada, Europe and the United States where, last time I checked, I was able to cook food from my ancestors country and also go to Los Angeles to see TV shows and develop a nonsense indie rock app. It's exclusionary to a lot of brown people to automatically assume European means white, Zizek means a country, a symbolic country, of adopted values which is not just tolerance but radical acceptance and forcing oneself out of ones own skin to accept women and gays. I'm sorry, as someone whose first sexual experience was with a Muslim girl in the 1980s, before the reactionary movements in the Middle East had gained any influence here, I do not need to tolerate or understand the result of reactionary movements which advocate killing all those who would disagree with them or even lampoon them in a benign cartoon, as if the cartoon was drawn with arsenic and handed to children to lick as a Cracker Jack tattoo. This is the most important political piece I have read in ten years and if the left doesn't heed it, especially in the US, as someone who was in the US Army in an intelligence capacity I hope you enjoy seeing your children with shrapnel in their face thanks to what Trump will push us into, with no idea how to control it besides whipping up mob violence against people who simply look Arabic to uneducated rubes.

Posted by Kristopher Irizarry on 2016-01-27 00:30:01

The soundof silence.

;)

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2016-01-14 22:42:11

Trying to understand, but somewhat hard. In the RC church we talk about the altar boy but forget what happened to children under care of other church groups. The stories of young girls porked by their pastor is just as bad. What we have is a change of faces but the one in power is still the same. As long as we view the sect of "W" a a pure loving form of Islam we show how our smoke and mirror world is created.

Posted by 6384601 on 2016-01-11 17:13:24

So then? Respond.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2016-01-07 20:52:40

Firstly, Lacan is only useful in that his framework provides a good background for interpretation. On this issue, I cannot tell you WHY lacans framework is useful, I can only display what I percieve to be itsusefulness. This is how every interpretive method works: they are essentially "dogmatic" in their approach. Ask Einstein why he decided to make the speed of light constant. Not because he knew it was correct, but simply to create a new framework of physics. Only the EFFECTS of his framework seem to prove its correctness, otherwise the speed of light does not appear consistent to our former empirical tests. The reason this is important, especially for Lacan'sthesis "there is no metalanguage" is precisely because WE CANNOT KNOW beforehand the true inner workings of the mind. It requires a postulate, and it's just my opinion that Lacans approach happens to bring about many "truth-like" effects.

Otherwise, how do you propose to answer a question like "why does populism coincide with nationalist racism?". You need a framework, and there no empirical knowledge that can provide that framework. So you postulate. This is why psychology keeps pissing in the wind: they try to believe it's "science" but every psychology HINGES ESSENTIALLY on a "dogmatic axiom."

Regardless, you provide no framework that you prefer nor do you even provide any evidence as to why my Lacanian interpretations area "misapprehension"?

Once again I'll state CLEARLY AND EXPLICITLY:

1) What is the relationship between populism and right wing nationalism/racism, specifically regarding the quote that I was directly commenting on and which I referenced? To remind you:

""(look at the White Australia Policy for example; the Labor party doesn't want to own it, but it was theirs from its inception in 1901 though to its abolition by a Centre-Right government led by Menzies). These days working class people objecting to immigration are designated "far right" or even "fascists" even if they are clearly populist movements"

This was the issue, and I felt using Lacan, Hegel, and Zizek would be useful bc well frankly ALL 3 of them theorize directly upon this phenomenon. In fact, when I say "improvising" I really mean "taking a piece from each" and stringing it into a coherent thought which Zizek actually already does. In other words, I'm making the same argument Zizek does in many of his books, but with a few different starting points from Lacan.

Regardless, you did not address this topic, so please stick to the issue and address it.

2) Now that we've established WHAT the issue actually is (which I already had done), you can giveme a real argument: WHY is Lacan not pertinent to the topic of populism vs racism/nationalism, specifically regarding the abovequotation?

3)- Even if Lacan isn't "pertinent" as you claim, you made another entirely separate claim: that I have mis apprehended Lacan as you put it.

Ok I gave quite a few interpretations of Lacans thesis "there is no metalanguage," so use my comment and tell me: HOW did I misapprehend Lacan?

This is like 4th grade English class dude. So annoying.

"I disagree with you. You're wrong"

HOW, WHY, SHOW ME with evidence from the text.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2016-01-05 14:35:00

You are funny. Since you make no points worth addressing, nor do you demonstrate how Lacan matters here, I will commend you to "keep improvising"...

Posted by Queequeg on 2016-01-05 00:09:13

You see all those single male immigrants? Those are what we in immigration syudies call "anchor immigrants." Once they get established, each one will generate an average of another 10 immigrants. An entire village may have scraped together the money to get them there, so you think they are going to go without their share? They will bring their parents, siblings, cousins, uncles, and so on and so on until you have an entire village miraculously transported from Afghanistan to Germany. And they will not need to learn German. Oh, NO! It was part of the bargain that in exchange for you getting the benefit oif their compay that you will take care of them for life. Why, do you imagine they came all the way to Germany to work for a livig? HA HA HA! So pretty soon you will have these enclaves of desperately underemployed Muslims all over Europe. Now, I know most Muslims are very nice and peaceloving people, but ptetty soon the second generation will start to believe they are discriminated against and that is why they are so much poorer than other Germans, and of course some skin heads will probably ytell ames at them, to reinforce this idea. Then they will start to hate Germany and everything German, and they will start to read their Korans a bit more carefully and note that all the discrimination is considered as "attack" on Islam, and they are justified is waging a defensive "Jihad" against you. So, even though they have been eating your food and living off your welfare system for the last 20+ years, they will try to die killing as many of you as possible. But tyhats ok, it will only take about 20 years and probably only 5-10% of them will become radical jihadist sympathizers.

Posted by John Cross on 2016-01-04 23:48:11

LOL, obviously you have no idea who I am.

Posted by John Cross on 2016-01-04 23:35:54

Blah blah blah you didn't address my post dude. You went on a meaningless tangent.

Address the issue as I did, WITH A QUOTE AND AN INTERPRETATION. Jesus it's not that difficult.

My primary point was made explicit when I quoted the article: namely how does populism seem to coincide with right wing racism.

I think I gave a pretty in depth attempt at a Zizekian/Lacanain/Hegelian interpretation of this phenomenon.

Now, you have my postto reference, so please quote my post and tellme

1) HOW I "misapprehension Lacan"

and

2) Why Lacan isn't important to this topic (as you stated), especially in light of my own interpretation of Lacans thesis "there is no metalanguage"

So tired of these accusatory posts with absolutely no content. "You misapprehend Lacan...you should read more Althusser...Lacan isn't important to this discussion"

So many claims yet absolutely zero reasoning behind them.

Annoying as heck to say the least.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2016-01-04 23:24:59

You misapprehend Lacan--this is often seen among the "lit-crit" types who have not practiced as psychoanalysts. I have, but this misses the point. Your ranting about Marx is similarly bizarre. I expect you are american, English? You seem to entirely have missed the essence of Zizek's article, as he announces his views in the early section. See the quotes.Much of Zizek's analysis comports with Russian philosophers, i.e., Solovyov, Ilyin, Zinoviev, even Dugin. Our weltanschuung is dramatically different from the american/western. Our concept of 'soberest' is clearly implied in the approach taken. Zizek certainly understands the inherent paradox. This is not about racism and populism as you suggest; nor is it about communism or socialism or any imagined contradiction. Following Gramsci, Zizek takes sides. He reject petite bourgeios ideology---the fetishism of superficial empirical analysis. Instead, he examines the tensions through the lens of praxis and culture---not some disembodied ideological name dropping game. And Zizek chooses his words carefully--You ought to have gone further w Althusser or perhaps Adorno. Lacan famously replied to a young student, "What do you advise me to become a psychoanalyst." Lacan replied, "Do crossword puzzles." I would urge you to carefully look at what he writes using the Slavic ear--we are raised to think metaphorically and ironically. It is unfair to be hyper critical: Zizek does meander. And I have a difficult task always to convey the textured meanings--or what Zinoviev calls thresholds of meaning. Here are a few quotes that convey some of the hidden thinking I detect in this article, maybe helpful, maybe not."since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays, I am ironic. If it is pulled out I shall die.""Take away paradox from a thinker and you have a professor."Kierkegaard"For an American poverty is an embarrassment; for a Serb it is a symbol of a Socratic ideal of family unity--of struggle." Emir Kustiricia"Advertising is the very essence of democracy.""Our pride and self importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic."Anton Chekov"World domination manifests itself as an intellectual or if you prefer, cultural diktat. This is why in the past decades americans have so zealously tried to bring down the intellectual and cultural common denominator of the entire world to their own level. Try to tell an american that their values will destroy. Russia--you will not be able to." Alexander Zinoviev 1999--the most prominent Soviet Logician of his era--philosopher, writer of fiction, poetry and painter while an exile in Germany.Essentialistically, in my view, Lacan is not important to this discussion, except as a backdrop, --that being his theory of identity derived from his famous "mirror theory". We both dismiss most comments, this is partly because many reject analysis, while others only view the discussion from one perspective. And this cannot work with Zizek. Sometimes I find his ideas to resemble a flailing child seeking attention; sometimes he uses the various perspectives he is conversant with to bring us a beautiful and brilliant fresh look. He delights me here!

Posted by Queequeg on 2016-01-01 00:00:30

they all use leftist jargon....

Posted by Politico Incorrectico on 2015-12-16 20:50:23

This author gets it, unlike the marxist leninist crowd in this forum that wants to absolves muslim culture/religion from the monsters they have created. The same people who pounce on the dumb comments of a televangelists will say anything to absolve muslims from what their culture has spawned.

Posted by viva la migra on 2015-12-15 22:04:28

Sophomoric I always love this word. It basically means "I don't want to engage ur arguments so I will name call."

It was a nice chat I thought, we had.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-12 08:15:20

LMAOROTF dude youve been trolled you didnt seriously think i was arguing with your sophomoric gibberish you were a useful idiot . bye

Posted by bruce on 2015-12-11 21:41:44

I think that Europeans and Americans don't agree on what freedom is. European understanding of freedom is connected to egalitarianism,American sense of freedom is connected to owning a large private arsenal of arms.

Posted by coniinthegarden on 2015-12-11 10:22:02

I agree except I would call his ideas simply common sense. You can't be "tolerant" of cultures which are based on intolerance. It's just stupid. I think countries accepting refugees should make it clear at the on set that they will not tolerate intolerance, including prescribing the way their woman should dress. I would impose secularization in public.

Posted by coniinthegarden on 2015-12-11 10:09:43

Are you referring to so called "liberals" as leftists? I think American liberals are either confused or consciously staying away from class war and satisfied with achieving women's and LGBT rights, only tokenism and band-aid solutions for poverty and race. I will never understand their stand on immigration and trade policies (supporting NAFTA and TPP). Sanders really stands out as an American patriot. He understands our first moral obligation is to American working class and preservation of the middle class. Refugees are a separate moral problem because of US involvement in the mess.I feel like eg. everyone who voted for the war in Iraq should be obliged to put up ten refugee families.

Posted by coniinthegarden on 2015-12-11 10:02:45

An intervention: Zizek often offers a textual reading of a film, much like Lacan reads Freud along with new cases and their complexities which vexed the latter, thus offering a theoretical and clinical explanation for Freud's so-called changing views on the ego (propagated by ego-psychologists like Anna Freud) and finding them as a coherent whole. It is true that Malcolm X, after his expulsion by Elijah Mohammad, did regret that above-mentioned comment, and he did say that when he asked for a complete separation of the races (Whites and Blacks), he himself was practicing racism. He also, in a press conference (available in Youtube, and also depicted in the film) made it clear that while the Whites could help his new Temple of Islam, they could not join any radical mass Black movement since there had to be some Black unity before Black-White unity. Along the same lines Gandhi, during the Indian Independence struggle, asked the South African Hermann Kallenbach, one of his foremost friends, to step down and stop helping him, because Gandhi wanted the Indian people to win their Independence on their own terms. Is not Zizek's reading of Malcolm X's "Nothing" a similar one? Is he not freeing this "Nothing" from the racial reading we the viewers (and Malcolm X himself at that time) give it? The two points Zizek makes that struck me before he reached this example was : 1) all symbolic-systemic violence practiced by minority Immigrants and "Oriental" Muslims differs from that of "Occidental" Roman Catholic priests in that the former is not contempt-ed, and the former violence is tried to be justified based on the status of its perpetrators as minority Immigrants; and 2) the very majority of minority Immigrants and "oriental" Muslims contempt all kinds of such symbolic-systemic violence, and it is they who are betrayed when the Liberal leftists (don't be surprised but it is for them this article by Zizek is meant) try to hide the monstrosity by claiming that this is to be expected by such minority immigrants, but we must remember, we are responsible for their plight. Thus, in the case of Tamer Nafar, a radical emancipatory project is materialized, a true Leftist stance, where Nafar finds fault with his own community, to save his community (the problem do not lie with some big Other outside, but within ourselves - Zizek speaks of this), as opposed to the anti-Immigrant, Nazi, ultra-Right populist movements which believes precisely in this big Other, which for them are the immigrants. And I do not think Zizek is being a realist here but a thorough-going Idealist (and surprisingly again, who else but an Idealist can become a true materialist, which is a Hegelian lesson?). What he offers us is this dialectics - solving an internal problem by accepting the Universal stance of European Modernity (The French Enlightenment and onward). This same dialectics is at work all through this article, and also all through his thought.

Posted by Deepak Mathew on 2015-12-10 12:59:08

Ok so I misunderstood your initial post. In fact, I made the same assumption you are making about me: that when you claimed "false consciousness" you were referring to the "every cow is grey" outside perspective of objectivity which I'm so tired of hearing.

I 100% agree on your interpretation of "there is nothing outside ideology," but I think when you use the term "objectivity" it's only reasonable to assume you mean that term in its traditional sense: that it is contrary to subjectivity, that it refers to a clean, in-mitigated slate of "objective" interpretation.

This is what I assumedyou meant as well, but I think we agree and I'll use I think Lacan here when he says: "truth is partial." That in fact the subjective positions are not simply "relativistically equal" but rather, the subjective position of an ideology (not all, but certain ideologies which account for the RIGHT perspective) are in fact the partial truth of the "whole."

Yes, Zizek is certainly no postmoderist here: he DEFINITELY seeks "better, more correct" ideologies and This is what I was getting at and what you were describing very well.

I simply assumedyou operated under the naive assumption that there is such thing as a consciousness that is not false: indeed "we are always already eating out of the trash can." Sorry for the confusion, and nice work interpreting Zizek.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-10 11:27:56

Lol I'll take it as another win for the Left. This is how these exchanges usually end: with the weaker side claiming "u make no sense! ur dumb!". While I stick to the topic and continue trudging along, laying bare your blatantly racist (in fact openly racist), elitist, ideology of "objective science" which presumed to know the capacities of free humans via vague calculated means, and "the whisper among experts."

Regardless, I have stuck to the issues whereas you've resorted to name calling and most important and obvious: you want the exchange to end. The reason I can stick to the topic is bc I have the truth of the masses of humans on my side, the strange power of THE BETTER ARGUMENT, which I will for the umpteenth time re-state:

Human intelligence is not predictable nor (and this is most important) is it EVEN PROPERLY DEFINABLE! I'd love to hear a proper definition of "intelligence" that accounts for the myriad capabilities of the human mind/subject. In denying the capabilities of certain individuals, you necessarily DEPRIVE the vast majority of the globe of their very core human subjectivity: which is the ability to choose what they want to pursue as their project for their lives. If you would like to deprive billions of people this right to their humanity then I will certainly be on the other side, with them, making the better argument, fighting against elitist a like yourself.

Thanks for the exchanged I enjoyed it.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-10 08:26:29

whats haughty is your jabberwoki. Your last two posts make no sense. They are jibberish so responding is not possible. Its clear you are trying to imagine a world that is designed for every individual. Ok this is just plain stupid nations and institutions need parameters and laws which are designed for averages. This is the problem we were discussing why multicultural societies are a disaster and failing. Only whites have tried these and their nations are almost destroyed because of it. the problem is that the laws and systems are designed for whites and they dont work for low IQ, high violence , low future time orientation, R reproduction strategy, low trust non white cultures. They cant compete without things like affirmative action and liar loans, They dont assimilate they blame their failures on racism etc etc. IT doesnt matter that some of them are able to do ok even thrive even become president, because the others are destroying mankinds best hope of further advancement, and whites and their cultures and homelands are being destroyed. We could have moved mars into near earth orbit and terraformed it on what it has cost to make hunter gatherers almost human And BTW this conversation is over your an idiot..

Posted by bruce on 2015-12-09 18:55:26

This was not my question. I will get back to you later today.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-09 10:38:39

Then respond to it....

You want to generalize entire populations at the expense of the depriving humans of their most basic subjectivity. To be according to you, replaced by some psuedo deterministic "genetic probability model." This is the current mode of cynical ideology: "we discard the silly beliefs of religion, gods, all that ritualistic stuff, IN FAVOR of (and here's the key) a SCIENTIFIC, OBJECTIVE reasoning or rationale.

What this means is simple: you're not only producing a world view deprived of any human meaning or subjectivity, you're creating an ideological framework that PROPOSED TO KNOW THE "FULL" TRUTH as if some human could grasp the myriad of genetic recombination. It is indeed a HAUGHTY and obscene gesture to assume we could predict, maintain, organize, and filter these expansive, UNPREDICTABLE, systems.

Indeed, when trying to remove "religious thought" in favor of "science," you have produced the most pervasive Religion yet: technocratic beurocracy. Wherein only "experts"make large scale decisions that affect billions, where each atomized human is deprived of their defining feature: the human subjectivity TO CHOOSE YOUR OWN DAMN DESTINY without someone telling you what it "shall be"

So who is the religious nut now?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-08 08:38:06

GOD YOURE DENSE

Posted by bruce on 2015-12-07 22:04:00

Oh so what your saying is exactly as I stated: you cannot predict an INDIVIDUAL humans intelligence before conception.

Great, thanks for repeating my claim and making it even more clear: you're running your "social darwinist" theories off of vague probabilities. That you employ "The secret whisper" as your main argument is hilarious, especially seeing as that "whisper" is yet another probability!

I'll say it again and I am 100% correct: you cannot predict an individualhumans intelligence. Period. Please, give me empirical data that stands against that? And once again, using the "mean" does not show us MUCH OF ANGTHING on an individualbasis.

So please I'll give you my whnicity then you can guess my IQ. We'll see how that works.

Furthermore, who's to say IQ is the most important type of intelligence? I have a Down syndrome cousin who clearly has more sense of people and human emotions than you. Call it "morality" call it what you want, he has genuine sense of empathy, which clearly you lack. In that case I would argue he is "smarter" than you.

You're reproducing the weakest most racist arguments. That's fine you of course have that right, but as I stated: your probabilities are just that: they are guesses and for all the "mean" population u might in a round about way are able to "predict," you will miss the mostcrucial aspect of humanity: humans are not determined by their genetics, therefore there is a space for actions that simply cannot be explained by deterministic DNA modeling. You simply cannot know how another person will pop out, and I prefer giving people that chance instead of pre-emptively excluding them from "the higher IQs" of the world.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-07 17:40:01

by your comment which screams ignorance on so many levels,you obviously know zero about evolution or genetics but ill provide a reading list at the bottom.By " before hand " you mean what before conception, before birth, before they mature, before i meet them test them? Ill give you the benifit of the doubt about this unintelligible phrase and assume you mean we cant tell from someones Genome what their IQ will be. Its true we have not yet figured out exactly how this trait works but we are well on the way the chinese who have no progressive qualms are hosting the effort because of religious fanatics like your self make this politically unfeasible at american universities. I assure you they are closing in on it and we certainly will be able to if not predict an exact test score get pretty close and more importantly edit genes to improve human intelligence.In the meantime In your hackneyed description of random mutation you seem to imply this evolutionary process works against the origin of species rather than is the progenitor of specie differentiation. These mutations have no effect in most cases and in the rare occasions where a mutation is adaptive it take tens of thousands of years to be adapted in any way meaningful to Mendelian prediction. It would have been more intelligent of you to have said that in sexually reproductive species like humans, before conception, and without sequencing its difficult to predict which genes will be passed on among the possible from parents. But you would still be missing the forest for the trees.Like Mendel we can use our eyes and see what nature has wrought, we may not be able to predict any givin individuals exact IQ but that is a red herring. What we can do and have done is prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that intelligence is highly hereditable. The most conservative bio denialist retrenching position today is 50% heritable but the whisper number that all geneticists privately admit to is 80% hereditary.And lets stipulate the 20% environment portion really doesnt matter much even in a place like mexico where obesity is a bigger problem than malnutrition.Ao the facts on the ground are High IQ parents have high IQ kids. And there are racial mean IQs. So while two legacy Ivy league +2 SAD parents might have a +1.5 SD child over [about three] generations the childs children will revert to the group mean unless it continues to mate within a stabilized high IQ sub group [like say Harvard classmates] in which case they will continue that breed.So while I cant predict positively a theoretical persons IQ If i know their race and ethnicity I can give a mean for that group as well as the shape of the curve and tails. If I know the parents IQ I can get much much closer, if I know the grandparents information I can almost nail it.But I dont need to predict any individuals IQ when designing national policies, I only need the large numbers, and they are very very very important when designing national policy nation rise and fall on human potential which is simply IQ. And IQ are only one of many genetic variants aggressiveness, future time orientation, reproductive patterns, are some of the most diverse among populations and critical to policy. Im going to link you to the reading list on Jaymans blog so you dont scream propaganda, hes a lefty, hes black, the child of immigrant,s and married to a white woman.Hes also very intelligent and one of the pioneers in breaking through the race/gender is a social construct you nazi nonsense.His reading list is extensive and ranges from the easily accessible to back off Im a scientist. Hes also got links to dozens of blogs and websites many run by highly credentialed and influential geneticists evolutionary anthropologists biologists etc all working in the HBD field. Ps you really ought to stop bragging about how smart and well read you are it makes you look stupid and insecure those of us who are only become more aware of how little we know not how much.

Posted by bruce on 2015-12-07 08:32:55

The obverse of the CRITIQUE of 'false consciousness' is the promotion and enthusiastic reproduction of 'false consciousness'. You pose the question in a silly way and you answer it in an even sillier one, trying to attribute to me a position that is not mine. Objectivity is an achievement WITHIN the space of interpretations not a spot outside that space. It is what allows us to judge some interpretations as right and profound and some others as false and wrong , although the epistemological symptoms that produce these latter, or the political pathologies that fuel them, may be interesting and certainly subject to critical examination. You confuse that (which is the Zizekian , among others, position) with a debased relativism where all cows are grey. One interpretation as good as another, a fascist the same as a left democrat or a communist. You want to equate all positions, those productive of consciousness with those that defeat it and perpetuate blind aggression , but it simply won't wash. The fact that 'all is ideology' (which you seem to misunderstand as saying that ideology x is as good as ideology y since they share a mechanism, an affect, an aesthetic, etc.) does not stop Zizek to thinking through, holding and defending a critical position against an uncritical one. It does not stop him from distinguishing between fascist nihilism (or the barbarism of advanced capitalism) and a non-Stalinist communist political vision . It does not stop him from supporting the latter and condemning the former.

Posted by Elizabeth Walker on 2015-12-06 18:26:09

I'm saying if you knew anything about genetics (if u want to enter this debate I assure you I've read moreon the issue and it willbe embarassing for you), you'd know: there is simply and utterly NO WAy to determine the exact intelligence of a human before conception.

In fact, our genome is designed BY THE VERY PROCESS of the tiniest "malfunctions". To put it to you succinctly: if quantum physics has shown us that in the last instance there is a bit of randomness, and DNA works at the organic chemistry level, and the placement or (dis)placement of an electron is constituent of the process of recombination, then you have to deduce there is in the lastinstance no way of determining someone's intelligence before hand.

Please just get on my level, since your social Darwinism would tell you: give up bc you already know he's genetically moreapt than you, he reads more, and is more intelligent. But you wouldn't want to admit social Darwinism when you're on the losing end would you!??? Of course not.

So take a look. It's in a book. READING RAINBOW.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-06 13:17:44

so your basing things off wishful thinking?

Posted by bruce on 2015-12-05 13:03:41

So ur basing things off genetics?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-03 22:52:57

response?

Ahh it's too bad that I read more Nietszche than you. Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-12-03 22:49:35

What is the obverse of "false consciousness"? Is it "true consciousness"?

Zizek would argue this is the PRIMARY mode of today's ideology: that there IS a "true, objective" reality which the "false consciousness" misses. In other words, the primary mode of ideology is to say "that over there is ideology, while this is not."

There is no space outside of ideology. We cannot exist but within it. You're trying to dismiss something as if there is a "more objective"option. No the point that you should at least try to make is to argue over one set of beliefs over another. Your objectiveperspective is a ridiculous fantasy. This is a terrible argument. I'm so tired of explaining this to people. WE ARE ALWAYS INTERPRETING. You can only choose one interpretation over another, non-interpretation is not a choice.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-28 20:09:34

I don't know about 'full fascist' (Germany, for example, is very sensitive to that kind of notion, though we know what Germany was capable of twice in one century) but I do believe your notion of psychological capacity is spot on. The people's (of any European country) reaction to population increase of any self-contained demographic, Muslim or not, will be above all subjective. It will depend on how much perceived stress these migrants put on the existing population who feel a sense of home or proprietorship about their city/town/village/country. It will depend on how the migrants integrate or do not, and it will depend - for better or worse - on what the migrants ultimately have to offer 'in return'... what they contribute. Example: the Chinese in America were persecuted for decades. In their case they were not allowed to integrate, perceived as a threat. Ultimately, however, they were accepted because they offered businesses Americans found they liked and eventually needed. The large Muslim population in a country like Denmark stems out of an original invitation to the Turks for migrant workers in the '60s - they still don't really assimilate, but they brought cheap food and labor. These might sound like superficial facts, but they impact the way an existing population receives a migratory one.

Posted by ParisIonescu on 2015-11-28 10:35:32

I am not proposing to keep quite and inactive. I think we should do the opposite: Support the refugees, take some actions to stop the war, revolt and change the European (right-wing) governments.

Posted by jsaturno on 2015-11-26 03:17:25

He is so grotesquely false! I also hope he and his ilk do not become politically dominant in the Netherlands, or anywhere else, for the simple reason that their grotesque false consciousness will turn into a state sponsored mass murderer (or gleeful spectator of state sponsored mass murder) at the blink of an eye. It happened before

they may have deleted the link so look up " a gentle introduction to unqualified reservations "They dont jive i said the middle classes were supporting enlightenment values, As Ive pointed out enlightenment values seem to be susceptible to attack so im kind of post democracy at this point, and while still sentimental about the enlightenment as I am about The Church the reality is theyre bullshit. all men are neither created nor equal they are evolved differently.Is that the Nazi version of Darwin?Are you going to tell me race and gender are social constructs?Nietzsche was not a Nazi but he certainly would be considered one today and certainly opposed your morality.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-23 18:02:05

I'll read it. Send the link.

As for your psuedo social Darwinism: how do those jive with enlightenment values? After all, aren't we talking about immanal Kant here? Yet you seem to be exposing the Nazi version of Nietszche...

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-23 17:47:51

yes if in the end the sub 65 IQ third world and pajama boy leftys win then productive white men got what they deserved and to the victor spoils. But whats really happening is western civilization is committing suicide it could easily continue to thrive for millenia more and it could even bring the rest of the world along for the ride but its let marxists turn enlightenment and christian values inside out and elites now signal there holiness by destroying their people and civilization. and sure if its not checked and wipes us out then we had a genetic flaw and gnon got us. But do you think the hunter gatherers can survive its kind of like saying your cat surviving you sleeping pill demise proves its evolutionary superiority yeah true but only until it starves to death.Ill tell you what you seem like a intelligent if impressionable young man.Heres a link to a really smart guy who once thought as you do but ket asking questions as you are now. hes much better writer than I am. Give him a fair hearing and see if you change your mind . I promise hes no conservative.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-23 16:47:09

So you're basis for "morality" is as you put it is the "nature to survive"?

If that is the case, how can you say the "weak banding together" are not in fact the strong ones? In other words, isn't your model simply based on "who won"?

After all, how can you call the ones weaklings who "bring down" the strong when via their banding together they happen to come out victorious?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-23 15:02:25

guy sorry im just really impatient with this 20 something veiw of the world and man.Heres the difference when a capitalist is defending his property its moral the only morality thats not subjective the morality of natutre to survive. when a state does violence of the type you like its imoral its dysgenic its weaklings banding together to destroy the the strong and productive. if a nation is doing moral violence say defending itself or expanding its territory then fine may the best organism win.you seem not to get certain basics. one is violence actually solves most things. in the long run propping up the weak causes greater suffering its a law of the universe. The course the left has set first bankrupted the western world which collapse has been averted for now by petro dollar fiat shenanigans which you ought to be thanking the banksters because they are on your leftist side propping up the Cathedral.Now they are accelerating the third world invasion foolishly thinking this will solve the socialist insolvency, not only will it make it ten thousand times worse but they are literally genociding the euoropean people whos crushed by taxes feminism low wages and crime from earlier immigration are in a population collapse soon they will simply be dispossed by screaming minorities then simply murdered like south african farmers.do you think this will be good for these third worlders who will feed them who will provide make work jobs and grant them pretend degrees who will keep the lights on?when we are gone, you think china will be sensitive to multiculturalism they will enslave them then wipe them off the planet. bill gates bono and co have created a baby boom in sub saharan africa which has gone from 500,000 30 years ago to a projected half the planet at 4 billion in 25 years who is going to take care of these people with an average IQ below 65? this is leftist policy its all based on nonsense moral posturing

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-23 12:26:43

i call the butchering of central and south americans a successful operation condor i call it doing what was needed to prevent more of your mao stalin type reguimes from taking over the world funny how its always hitler this hirler that when the national socialists didnt kill a tenth of what the international socialists did.central americans didnt want shit they were primitives commie operatives wanted it and it was in our interst to stop communism because if allowed to grow it would have taken us- who knew it already had.east india and Rhodes are capitalism defending itself without the need of state which was your premise, here lets put it another way -no capital no state. state needs capital not the other way around and pretty soon tech capital will make state obsolete. yeah ive read everything orwell wrote and he was appaled at the direction socialism was heading and if alive today would make mincemeat of your ilk.whats happening now is george soros the Clintons the Eu and usg imposing one socialist/corportist world order and wiping out the european diaspora because we are too independent. the mid east is them failing at understanding the differences between races, and the fiasco in the ukrain etc is them trying to impose leftism on russia china etc that will be as succesful as it was in the mideast. probably the european diaspora will awaken and we will see a bloodbath as we try to repel the invasion not anytime soon still too adled by liking miscegenation propaganda ads on facebook.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-23 12:10:39

'People' does not mean the people of the Europe only, for the Left. It is Eurocentricism, which essentially a logocentric approach to the problem, not people-centric. If Zizek advocates such a logocentric approach to the issues, as you said, he is making himself insane as he wants to destroy himself.

Posted by Terence Samuel M P on 2015-11-23 10:12:30

He sees that the left has gone completely delusional, and it trying to steer it back into what he thinks is the correct direction. The Left is now the enemy of the very people they claim to protect, adopting a hysteric third world-ism and ignoring the discontent of Western peoples entirely, this will be their downfall. But of course "Those who the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad." as they say.

Posted by Aristocles_Inv on 2015-11-23 07:11:58

So then?

Please explain to me your distinction between capitalist barbarism and state sponsored?

Use your big boy words. None of this "you're an idiot." Have the better argument. OR TRY AND FIND IT FOR ONCE bc you haven't looked.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-22 21:25:11

Lol big tribal blood letting? What do you call what's already happening now? What do you call every American coup in the past 200 years? (there are at least 10) What do you call the butchering of Central Americans who wanted to nationalize their economic resources against large American corporations? Blood letting maybe?

If a state is centralized violence as you put it, what in the hell do you call The East India trading company?

Please, enlighten me as to the difference between centralized state violence and centralized capitalist violence? THEYRE THE SAME BUD, in fact state violence IS DONE IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN CAPITAL. Why in the world did we go to Iraq? Vietnam? Every war since Hitler? To protect our national interests, I.E. INVESTMENT!

Are you blind or did you really never read Orwell?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-22 11:14:55

So you want barbarism? Like I said, how can you own large tracts of property in a world without the government to protect it? Will you simply shoot everyone? I am confused as to how property with be legalized/stabilized without the government...

Sure you can hire people to protect it, but who says the currency you gave themis worth anything? Why wouldn't they just usurp the land themselves?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-22 11:09:12

It's rare to see a leftist understand fascism, when I did (at the visceral level through experiences of multiculturalism) it only took me months to embrace it. How many of todays leftists do you think will do the same in that situation?

Like you I worry about the violence directed at outgroups/traitors/"traitors" but if you look honestly at history it will be much less than either communist or muslim societies.

Posted by Newshunter on 2015-11-22 10:50:17

of course, we are not blind to reality to claim that only Zizek can 'see' reality...

Posted by Terence Samuel M P on 2015-11-22 10:46:07

He saw reality and adjusted accordingly.

Posted by Aristocles_Inv on 2015-11-22 09:56:49

Classical liberalism, from which the emphasis on democracy, freedom, equality, etc. comes from, was created by the West and is therefore Western in origin and character. Don't culturally appropriate Western values shitlord.

Posted by Aristocles_Inv on 2015-11-22 09:50:21

im saying seld defense and what you call capitalism and i call private property and trade are the two most basic of human nay animal rights but rights are enforced by violence hominids realized greater advances could take place in personal autonomy [self defense and productivity [property and trade] if that violence were centralized.Thats what a state is centralized violence in defense and support of its members and their property. Modern states one they had this monoppoly of violence began to shake down and manipulate its members.And when you threaten people and their property with you anarcho tyranny and redistributionist plans you cease to be the state or citizen and become a thug. And sooner ot later thugs get dealt with. Your ilk now thinks the people who put cell phones in the hands of hunter gatherers in jungless throughout the world should now turn over their entire nations to these savages because social justice. WTF does that even mean.The ironic thing is you dont even notice the biggest leftists are the biggest capitalist and the only way that makes sense is a really evil orwellian dytopia. You want more equal societies you better keep those societies made up of people of equal abilities or all you will get is a big tribal blood letting.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-22 08:57:24

Shame on Zizek who advocates and pushes the rightist agenda on the Left (by calling us to 'break leftist taboos'!), in the disguise of the Left intellectual. What happened to the sanity of Zizek?

Posted by Terence Samuel M P on 2015-11-22 04:22:00

One doesn't need the State to protect private property from the State. This can be done by private security agencies or by people having their own guns. Again: you would hire thieves with the money expropriated from you to protect you from thieves ? Because that's what taxes are.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-22 03:50:23

Neoliberalism is not exactly capitalism: it's, again, big government: with the government intruding on the regulation process and selling off assets on the cheap to befriended entrepreneurs. Again: it's the State.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-22 03:48:55

So what you're saying is that the only form of capitalism outside of state sponsored is barbarism? And this is what you would like to return to? The model of the East India company?

lol I appreciate at least your honesty

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 22:08:42

Listen you Randoid idiot, if you can't see how of 'recently' (since the 70s, basically) Big Capital has been syphoning state funds (taxes, basically) for its own further enrichment then you must be blind or very dumb or both.

Look up 'neoliberalism'.

Posted by Gert on 2015-11-21 21:51:56

Well off the top of my head you could start with say the history of the east india, the northwest company, the hudson bay company,the Virginia and Massachusetts corporation/colonies, Cecil Rhodes, pirates and privateers, the history of how European nations colonized the world to protect indigenous peoples against private enterprises appropriating entire continents, The dutch trade companies, The Medici and Rothschild, the renaissance city states.the Pinkerton s, Wells Fargo, Al Capone, Gated Communities,Most malls, hotels, large department stores,and office buildings,universities, oil companies, The myriad of defense contractors, The hussars,The silk road traders, Debeers, The russian oligarchs,The type of defense the state offers capital is along the lines of "nice business you got their shame if anything should happen to it"- in short anarcho tyranny.Governments ought to protect all entities private property its why we pay taxes and delegate to it the right to violence.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-21 18:45:47

I might even agree you can shoot him on the spot. My question is what happens when he shoots you? If there is no state, then he now owns your property right? In other words, who is going to guarantee your property stays with your family etc.?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 17:06:20

You're confused: as o pointed out above: who guarantees the ownership of private property?

To give a real world example: let's say I own a very large plot of land. I don't personally have the resources (nobody really does) to guarantee nobody will cross my land, take some of its produce, maybe even set up camp, in general I can't guarantee myself that nobody will use my property. This is what the modern state accomplishes: it has a police force that protects property, it sets up national borders, etc. All of this is done so that I can "in title" own this land. But other than the state, IN WHAT WAY can I really say I "own" a huge piece of land?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 16:43:36

That's indeed the problem because the State will always encroach in the private market in order to leech off what the private market has created: solution.. weaken the State.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-21 16:33:42

The only problem is that massive body of corruption known as the State and when you talk about someone entering your house with a gun. you should be allowed to shoot him on the spot without the State telling you otherwise and forcing you to call an organisation that doesn't come to your assistance (the police) even-though you paid for them through the expropriation of your own money (taxes).

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-21 16:32:55

Communists like this author are desperate to order people what to think, do, how to live..wake up you stalinist idiot!

Posted by Bijec on 2015-11-21 16:32:46

It's been a long time since I have exposed myself to the rococo language of a true intellectual. This was a hard slog for me, but I think the essence was: stop thinking in ideological terms and face the realities -- on both the Left and Right. Zizek's is a very managerial argument for democracy: set your common goals, identify strategic objectives, establish rules of engagement and hit the start button. Directed freedom within essential limits. Except for the goal-setting part, the US constitution probably comes closest to this ideal, creating a representative democracy with a bill of rights. It is not a popular democracy nor a license for laissez faire, but (until very recently) something in between. Early on, the US trashed the Articles of Confederacy which had given states too much individual power over issues that could quickly scuttle the whole national enterprise. I'm sure this has been noted in European political circles.

Most of Zizek's intellectualizing, and that of his commenters, gets hung up on whose goals, objectives and rules. How much freedom within what limits? Whose cultural should dominate, the hosts or the guests? To me (and I think Zizek) this is not a solvable problem within the context of a true democracy where the guest almost always gets the shaft. The exception seems to be that guests and their cultural habits will be more welcomed in a place where the economy needs workers and there is enough time (generations?) for cultural integration to take place.

In a world that is now run by plutocrats and oligarchs, goals, objectives (and limits) will be set for us and we will be reduced to arguing ineffectually over the result. So far, it is not in the interests of global potentates to do what either Left or Right might wish.

Posted by JayHaden on 2015-11-21 15:52:28

Show me that history. Capitalists HAVE ALWAYS used the state from the very beginning. Give me a direct reference in the history of capitalism when the state wasn't used?

Thanks Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 15:26:20

So the state isn't used to protect private property?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 15:24:35

what a moron the state any state has never been used that way the state used to be the kings will and he had little use for capitalists except to borrow when need be, socialists states from the ussr to nazi to america attempt to ride parasitically on the traders who produce

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-21 12:45:48

Youre a real Idiot, you know nothing of history. try coming to my house and claiming it I promise I wont be calling the police.Capitalism is more than individuals and groups trading as they see fit [as opposed to raping and pillaging like socialists] capitalists have a long history known to those that read of doing just fine protecting their property before socialists instituted the gangs we refer to as democracies.The fact that traders have been extorted into into taking whatever amount of their property the thugs see fit does not mean they want or need the thug state it means they were stupid to buy the egalitarian project back when they had options and now they must bide their time with other men who wish again to live freely. I suppose you find this unlikely because you dont read history except by zinn but these capitalists you think are powerless and dependent are holding all the debt you socialist scum have piled up and while you dont even understand what all that financial mumbo jumbo implies they know very well and any day now your ilk will be taken down.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-21 12:43:09

one can only pray

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-21 12:32:18

The problem with "conservatives" like yourself is that they have this illusion that "oh if only capitalism could exist and be left alone by the state."

The problem is that the modern state exists FOR THE VERY SOLE PURPOSE of capitalism. In other words, what is the basis of capitalism? "Ownership" of property/capital. I like to use a simple example: If someone comes to your house with a gun and tell you "this is my house how, you will leave." Well naturally what's the first thing you're gonna do? Call the polic!me! This is my most primary beef with capitalists: you NEED the nanny state bc it is THE ONLY force that guarantees rights of ownership.

To put it succinctly: the state is the very FOUNDATION of capitalism.

This is why these conservative arguments grow old: yah yah u want the state to go away when you're doing "business" or working towards a "better economy" but at the end of the day the state is your most precious allie, he is the big Other who guarantees ALL your "economic freedoms."

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 10:53:08

When have capitalism and the state not been mingled?

I'll need a historical reference please.

Thanks! :)

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-21 10:06:16

well he IS a proponent of saying sometimes the most revolutionary thing to do is precisely nothing. #winning #withcheapshots

Posted by Carlee Wagner on 2015-11-21 10:05:27

That's what you get as soon as politics and capitalism get to mingle: you get state capitalism and socialism.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-21 08:51:46

Money, money, money. Must be funny. In the rich man's world. --- ABBA

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-21 08:51:02

So, why many immigrants prefer Merkelistan and Britanistan?

Posted by Čestmír Berka on 2015-11-21 08:40:44

current wave of refugees? - Eritrea, Afghanistan, Albania, Kosovo, Pakistan .... not only from Syria

Posted by Čestmír Berka on 2015-11-21 08:34:11

Since, erm... Yoooge Donald maybe? Herr Carson?

Posted by Gert on 2015-11-20 20:47:56

Lol which capitalists are those?

Can you refer me to ONE specific time in the history of capitalism that the state hasn't been used as a tool for capital?

Good luck with that.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-20 16:20:26

Actual capitalists despise state intervention and statism which you, as a Marxist (just like Zizek) applaud.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-20 15:21:01

Islam.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-20 15:19:59

You haven't really been paying attention: Obama started some five, six new wars in the period of just 7 years in office. Not bad for someone who got a Nobel Peace Price. Why not give one to the other socialists ? Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-20 15:19:48

I'm not a Zizek fan, but this is an excellent article, much deeper analysis than what we are usually offered. OK, Zizek would laugh at me here, comparing him with mere hacks, but nevertheless a welcom contribution and many good points.

There are a few points where I do not agree with him, but they are not central to his thinking. For example, poverty in Africa. He blames on agricultural interventions of the World Bank and others. I believe the opposite is the truth, that the West should have opened our markets to agricultural imports from Africa and Asia, maybe even insisting on organic agriculture and that this would have led to a boom in development of traditional village life, not the banishing of farmers to the city slums, where we are offering them participation the Western technology. Agriculture is work intensive, the villagers know how to do it, all they really needed was a reliable buyer and they would have grow, improving their housing, adding a school etc. as this can be done with little funds. Instead we protect and subsidize our farmers, and transfer high-technology and production to the undevelopped, this is what is creating the slums and destroying the villages.

Posted by trisul on 2015-11-20 06:54:17

A couple of other points. The likelihood is that a military coalition to tackle ISIS will move to include the Turkey, the Saudis, Iran, Russia etc- I struggle to see any of these as defenders of women, LGBTs, etc. All of which goes to show that the real issue about ISIS relates to realpolitick-ultimately it's not about defending the Western European universalist legacy or some other such fatuous illusion-it's still about territory and oil.

I think there's a real element of the "politics of the last atrocity" about Zizek's position and a fatigue at having to consider and defend some unpleasant truths. We can all agree that what happened in Paris was appalling, but that doesn't absolve us from thinking objectively about what lies at the heart of all this.The answer sadly is simple. As Bin Laden put it in 2004, "Which religion considers your killed ones innocent and our killed ones worthless? And which principle considers your blood real blood and our blood water? Reciprocal treatment is fair and the one who starts injustice bears greater blame." Following this logic,the organisations which act reciprocally are worth joining because they are effective in combatting injustice and engaging in a reciprocity of horror. For every drone attack which kills uncounted innocents, we will have an atrocity here.Why would young, angry Muslims choose to side with or join organisations that were passive and ineffective ?

By the same logic, the left has, by its ineffectiveness towards injustice, allowed a space to open up within working class communities where anger and alienation can be directed towards the twin racisms of fascism and Islamofascism as solutions to said anger/ alienation. Why would anyone join an organisation-whether , for instance,Labour in the UK/ the Democrats in the US or groups to their left- that rail against homelessness, poverty, racism-but cannot mobilise to physically prevent an eviction or stop a deportation? Why, again, would young Muslims put their faith in representative democracy, when its "representatives" ignored the majority which opposed the invasion of Iraq?

Sometimes the truth is simple and ugly. That does not mean we should dismiss it .

Posted by Nick Moss on 2015-11-20 06:37:10

Wow, you have every single person in a nation of 350 million all figured out, don't you? I, as an American, see nuance in other countries, but then again, I'm not blinded by hate for any particular nationality.

Posted by KA on 2015-11-20 06:31:08

How would you describe "Marxist filth" and what makes it filth? Or maybe you type Z-I-Z-E-K and found the nearest wiki page, saw "M-a-r-x" and then shit your pants.

This is typical of 7 year olds.

When u would like to join the discussion, lemme know bro! I'd be glad to embarrass you even more than you've done yourself!

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-20 00:20:34

I think he thinks the danger is precisely that they're mutually supportive.

Posted by Dawson Allen on 2015-11-19 22:47:09

Firstly, nice post. This is substantial in that it actually LOOKS at the arguments given. It is so obvious how many commenters simply denounce an article without ever engaging the content. You've definitely donethat and made some nice points.

You point out a VITAL contradiction, yet in a way you sort of dismiss it:

"(look at the White Australia Policy for example; the Labor party doesn't want to own it, but it was theirs from its inception in 1901 though to its abolition by a Centre-Right government led by Menzies). These days working class people objecting to immigration are designated "far right" or even "fascists" even if they are clearly populist movements"

I'm going to kind of improvise here whilst using Zizek as a guide. The key insight to begin with is of course Lacanian: "there is no meta language." What does this mean? Despite its original sexual content (that each lover is experiencing something different from her lover, that in factthe symbolic meanings that structure each's fantasy are probably incompatible) he means that each person is in their social world essentially solipsistic: there is no meta language to "mediate"the two points of view.

Now, what I like about Zizek is he's not your typical abstract philosopher who leaves the examples to the sturdy empiricist. No, he loves a good example. So here is a common joke that I think runs well with lacans thesis:

"3 guys walk into a bar, the 4th one ducked"

To begin we must actually start with the second clause. It is not that the second clause "splits" FROM the first; it is rather that the second clause distorts/synthesizes the entirety of the sentence. The first clause ("the bar") is properly ontological: the bar refers to a meaning that is in a way extended into eternity. The second clause is properly Ontic: the guy runs into it, instead of "representing" an eternal "bar-ness" of the place he's located, it instead IS the temporal location.

What we have, for Zizek, is as he calls it "a unique short circuit." Wherein two seemingly contradictory meanings find an odd middle ground. This is where Zizek strays (or strayed) from the classical Marxists: whilethey saw the development of ideology (the ontological) as DIRECTLY cause by the means of production/resources (the Ontic)c Zizek follows (I think) Althusser, claiming rather that ideology is sort of a free floating space that MAPS above the the world but has its very own, distinct logic. In other words, although the world and its interpretation are somehow "parallel" they nevertheless possess "no metalanguage", nothing that will truly "synthesize" the two, in the Hegelian sense.

So what's my freakin point? That what you pointed out as a contradiction (namely that working class populism seems to coincide, however we want to deny it, with racism), is the "same" split that Zizek/Lacan points out: the split between the Ontological/The Ontic, the Eternal Idea/ Temporality.

So what's the damn solution? This is, for Marx, the contradiction between Socialism and communism: that overt nationalism would NOT (for Zizek) pave the path to egalitarian communism; rather thatcommunism would RETROGRESSIVELY socialism.

That's all I got for now. I'll continue later.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-19 22:21:06

Sure I can agree Obama is partly responsible, but if you knew a thing or two about American politics you'd know: the republicans dominate the parliament as y'all call it. Furthermore, our countries constituents want to continue bombing in general.

By the time Obama was in office there was hardly a country to call Iraq. It already is what it is today: a stateless lawless dead zone. Obama was left to pick up the pieces.

Regardless of any of this, in an earlier post I sort of mirrored Chomsk explaining that Obama would hardly even be considered Leftist in Europe. In fact he'd probably be called a moderate. This is part of my point: the entire spectrum of American politics is so far skewed to the right that even a guy like Obama who appears leftists is really VERY centrist.

None of that particularly matters, especially considering Obama came into everything after Iraq was winding down. Right wing Hawks sunk us into this mess: this is not debatable.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-19 18:18:40

Good thinking ...

Posted by shiboleth on 2015-11-19 15:51:21

Good thinking ...

Posted by shiboleth on 2015-11-19 15:38:02

That's nice, what does the Turkish attacks of the Ottoman Empire in 1912 have to do with ISIS?

Please give me a direct causal link...

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-19 14:05:52

I like how you avoid my argument then simply "move on" to your next point. I'll take it as you're acknowledgment that your argument claiming the influx of immigrants is the fault of "leftists" is incorrect for obvious reasons which I pointed out.

As for your next claim: I willbe on the side of universality. What does this mean? It means that I will vehemently be in favor of a war on ISIS, but ONLY with those who vehemently oppose global capitalism. In other words: these are two sides of the same coin and Zizek would put it. Global capitalism and fundamentalism are two sides of a vicious cycle: they reporoduce each other.

In this way, I am not naive: Isis needs to be fought but on what grounds, what conditions? That each country involved recieve a certain amount of refugees (there must be limits but most western countries can handle this influx), AND that the West relinquish its economic hold on that region. Simultaneously I would support pulling back all support of Saudi Arabian and other dictatorships in the region.

What this means is that indeed if you are pro capitalist YOU ARE the quisling as you put it. Capitalism is of course the driving force behind the outgrowth of fundamentalism and the destruction of the region.

Indeed in order to truly oppose the real enemy, and not be a "quisling" you must NECESSARILY oppose global capitalism?

I doubt however you can say that.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-19 13:33:55

I agree. Part of the problem is that Zizek engages in a kind of "thinking aloud" that goes down all sorts of blind alleys and dead-ends-is sometimes right, sometimes drivel, often self-contradictory. Arguing with/against him can help clarify our ideas-but when we end up here with "We definitely live in interesting times" as the conclusion, the vacuity becomes obvious. Anyway, isn't grabbing someone off the street, putting them in an orange jumpsuit, holding them without charge and forcefeeding them, also a "Western value"?

Posted by Nick Moss on 2015-11-19 10:11:18

When Zizek talks about "the best part of the Western legacy-our egalitarianism and personal freedom" he forgets that these are in fact the products of struggles-against the established values of "the West"-ie capitalism. Respect for the rights of immigrants, lesbians and gays , women-were won by contesting the sexism, homophobia and racism which were the norms of 20th century Western capitalism. The same struggles will have to be fought again and again, in the West and elsewhere, as the capital tries to divide and rule those who oppose it. If egalitarianism and personal freedom are peculiar to the West, how come the ANC and the SACP played such a big role in bringing in anti-discrimination legislation in South Africa. Zizek also forgets that -far from being some kind of potential "enemy within" , the current wave of refugees is fleeing from Isis to the West ! Slavoj is right to try and link all the issues he raises back to the question of the class struggle. Like others though, he avoids the fundamental question-how come the left still has to "teach" the class from outside;how come the left is alien to working class communities which should be its fundamental terrain? How/why is the left not rooted in the class it claims to speak for? Until we start to engage with these questions we will remain in stasis, within nothing to bring to the issues we raise but more talk.

Posted by Nick Moss on 2015-11-19 09:51:33

What's confusing people is that Zizek is condemning the far right and proposing right wing measures, at the same time.You feel the 2 aspects contradicting? Well that's exactly who Zizek is.

And sadly, I always feel a real fear of the rise of the far right from Zizek's tone. It may explain some of his reactions, as if he sees some real danger and darkness is coming and he does not think the left is doing anything useful.

Posted by Fullmetal Ja on 2015-11-19 09:41:22

tfw Zizek is considered a right wing bigot.

Posted by Gerry Mander on 2015-11-19 09:39:48

Perfect!

Posted by Viorel Florin Sandu on 2015-11-19 06:03:11

Zizek is all over the place here. very strange. the man's got guts, tho

the refugees mostly want center-right governments, like Germany, UK, Texas, because countries with deregulated labor markets have more jobs on offer

the Clash of Civilizations is authentic, and legible to everyone. here in the US, the Rs r white. the Ds rn't people of color, per se, but people of color r Ds. in my short life I've seen Azawad, East Timor, the Donetsk People's Republic, Slovakia, South Sudan, ex-Yugoslav, ex-USSR, ISIS, Kurdistan, Catalonia and Scotland agitate meaningfully on the basis of nationality. nationalities r reliably political. class unity in struggle, on the other hand, is falsified by daily experience: the bus fare goes up to meet the drivers' new contract, the rent goes up to pay the property taxes. I'm better off when my boss is getting rich than when he's on the ropes

leftists generally support immigration, emotionally, but oppose policies that raise the rate of exploitation, which Marx tells us is the motive of capitalist demand for labor power. the hippies in my town say they like immigrants, but they hate property developers and yuppies, so no homes get built and the city's too expensive for working-class immigrants. hi unemployment, low supply, hi immigration. sounds like a peaceful recipe

Europe and the US should each be able to house 1 billion people. are public bathrooms too clean? are the elderly too inundated with help and attention? but lefties are too concerned with getting fairness for 3 people to bother getting food for 300, so the only people I really trust are the technologists, East Asians and the technocratic elite in Western central banks, and they're not great

still, we stand on the shoulders of giants. could b a lot worse

Posted by Dawson Allen on 2015-11-19 02:39:54

But let me give you one warning: in the event of an actual full-out war people know what side the left will be on. You'll be the Quislings and everyone knows that.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-19 01:15:24

The British and French drew them there for very good reasons: keep the Turks out, keep the Arabs down and keep peace and quiet. But then again: being a leftie you wouldn't know any about the Arab invasions that had been taking place since 714 AD and whose attacks would continue (mainly on small parts in France) until as late as the early 19th century or the Ottoman attacks that had been taking place until the 15th century - with the latest attacks taking place in 1912. Ooh dear: yes.. that close.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-19 01:13:55

Who forced out the latest batch ? Your good, leftie friend Obama did.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-19 01:11:27

Sure, the left "brought them in," but who forced them out?

Your logic is pathetic: WHO BLEW UP THEIR COUNTRY!???

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 18:37:51

Yes the problems with Islam have existed since 1400. I suppose the Christians were perfectly civilized gents at that time? Lol. But you wouldn't consider those "problems."

Regardless, it matters very little what Islam was in 1400 or the problems of 1400.

Point being: the current situation has most definitely sprung from hawkish right wing movements in American post-9/11 which sought to destroy and retaliate against Islam. If you would like to delude into think G Bush was some sort of left wing dove then lol be my guest.

Otherwise you must accept your predicament: you are reaping the backlash of decades of violence and brutality by the West against the Mid East, both economic and military. After all, recent history will tell you: who drew the lines in the Mid East and WHY did they draw them there?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 18:33:45

It matters a great deal, American. The European Left decided to bring in "new voters" because they had betrayed their own a long time ago and decided to bring in those displaced by Obama's policies in the Middle East. Never mind, also, that the problems with Islam in Europe date back 1400 years. But then again, being American, you wouldn't know any of that.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-18 17:02:59

It doesn't particularly matter where you or I are from.

So the flood of immigrants didn't come from a war torn country that was destroyed by right wing US policies? Interesting, maybe it was Ralph Nader who pushed us into war in Iraq.

You seem to be confusing cause and effect: the flood of immigrants is an effect. Sure, you can deal with it by simply attempting to not let them in, but since when has Europe had anything but porous borders? Do you also wonder WHY your borders are so porous? Hmm could it be that capitalists NEED the flow of goods across borders and therefore it was right wing neoliberal policies that left the borders so open to entry?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 16:35:18

Pay some attention to world affairs. It's the Left that brought them into our country. Who knows politics here better: you or the people from here ?

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-18 16:30:13

Similar to what ISIS did to the "degenerates" in Syria and Iraq then?

Posted by Mad Max on 2015-11-18 13:51:55

lol

Posted by Mad Max on 2015-11-18 13:43:14

Why is Zizek treated as a leftist intellectual? Most of what he writes is either inane, impenmetrable or reactionary. Serious question.

Posted by Bay Ridge Red on 2015-11-18 12:28:57

I was responding to the wrong post on this one. But nevertheless the point stands: it wasn't left wing European movements that have caused this, despite your inclination that they "let them in." No, it was OF COURSE staunch right wing capitalists of America who ripped the Middle East to shreds.

This isn't really debatable, I don't see how Left wing Euros caused any of this?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 11:30:40

Nice comment. Lot of content, and extremely interesting. I think we've all come away smarter for this. Many thanks.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 10:40:37

This is exactly my point: most of these "moderate leftists" operate under the assumption that "capitalism is a priori the correct system."

You're exactly correct to point out: the "New Left" has dominance over the CULTURAL NARRATIVE. Meaning what? Those in power love these issues: yes of course we must fight for women's rights! black rights! all rights! Meanwhile the silent issue that is left untouched is of course massive accumulation of capital. This is exactly why the "New Left" as you call it, doesn't pose any threat to those in power. Which is why I VEHEMTLY disagree with the centrality that these culturally issues are given: capitalism is the determining factor in our lives.

In other words, to put it in sort of silly but concise terms: the "cultural" issues have gained such centrality as a means of MISDIRECTION. The real issue is placed on the back burner, it is the underlying assumption that is simply "necessary" and unquestioned.

After all, what is more dangerous and oppressive to our society: that gays can't get married or that some dude has enough cash to buy the state of Nebraska?

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 10:19:37

"It is a fact that most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western European notions of human rights. Tolerance as a solution (mutual respect of each other’s sensitivities) obviously doesn’t work: fundamentalist Muslims find it impossible to bear our blasphemous images and reckless humor, which we consider a part of our freedoms. Western liberals, likewise, find it impossible to bear many practices of Muslim culture."

You must be joking. I was not expecting this from Slavoj. I am particularly flabbergasted by the overt connection made in this essay between "Islamic Fascism" which the left has apparently failed to condemn, and the homogenous mass of "Muslim refugees/migrants" representing it.

"Many of the refugees want to have a cake and eat it: They basically expect the best of the Western welfare-state while retaining their specific way of life, though in some of its key features their way of life is incompatible with the ideological foundations of the Western welfare-state."

This is just so wrong on so many levels. “Muslim culture” here “Western Liberals” there. The former rape and murder our children and the latter are too damn nice to say it out loud. Check this out re the Rotheram sexual abuse case:

"The perpetrators were almost exclusively members of Pakistani gangs and their victims—referred by the perpetrators as “white trash”—were white schoolgirls."

Apparently their ethnicity was downplayed because Western liberalism "condescendingly treats Pakistanis as morally inferior beings who should not be held to normal human standards."

And then:

"In order to break out of this deadlock,one should begin with the very parallel between the Rotherham events and pedophilia within the Catholic Church. In both cases, we are dealing with organized—ritualized even—collective activity."

The collective activity of ... Pakistanis? Muslims? Actually it's "Pakistani Muslim youth" to be precise. Damn those assholes… I mean, seriously? This is beyond caricaturism. You can't whitewash this kind of disrespect for the finer historical details of complex social and cultural formations simply by adding that "Christians also suck", “Europe never was a democracy” and "the really important thing is actually class."

There is a very good reason why Žižek is at his most brilliant when analyzing “popular culture”. The latter supplies him with an endless array of bounded artefacts (film, opera, literature, other philosophers) that he can grab onto and mince through the Lacanian-Hegelian-Marxist mental machinery to produce a variety of fascinating insights, analogies, metaphors and links to wider social, political and economic issues. This he arguably does with amazing skill and erudition. His approach becomes far more problematic when he extends it to everyday socio-political issues because he can’t be bothered with the tedious task of “research” such as gathering in-depth, open-ended socio-historical-ethnographic data to build a “case study” before commenting on it. Instead he often relies on disparate, isolated statements, whether in the media or personal exchanges and then proceeds to treat these once more as bounded artefacts from which he can extrapolate meaning and base his political commentaries that often land wide off the mark.

If he actually took the time to do some “boring old-fashioned research” he might actually consider the fact that the centralised, modernising, welfare state – often directly modelled on Western expeiences - has been the dominant political model in the Middle East and North Africa for well over half a century. He might also appreciate the fact that Islamic associations in these regions have resurged since the seventies precisely by taking over where state services collapsed, by providing services (schools, clinics etc.) that the state was no longer able to. In the specific case of Syria, much of the political opposition (before the war begun in earnest) was also taking the Syrian government to task for failing to deliver on its promise of “progress, development and welfare”, and not for its lack of Islamic credentials. There is therefore no clear cut division between “Muslim Culture” and “The Welfare State”.

Posted by BitPalanka on 2015-11-18 10:16:49

Does he? How about this sentence:

"Why do Muslim extremists, who were undoubtedly exposed to exploitation, domination, and other destructive and humiliating aspects of colonialism, target what is (for us, at least) the best part of the Western legacy—our egalitarianism and personal freedoms?"

Apparently, personal freedom and egalitarianism is the best thing the West has produced. But I will bet you one thing: raise any point you like from the article above, and I will find another one in the text that directly contradicts it. And that, in short, is called: Zizek.

Posted by BitPalanka on 2015-11-18 10:05:13

Yes, but I live in the US and I can only control what MY COUNTRY does, I am only responsible for what MY COUNTRY does.

Of course there is a world outside of the US and other power struggles surrounding it. Nevertheless, the US has military bases in how many countries? The US military power has for a long time been utterly superior. It's not a stretch to say, the US is economically and culturally the most dominant of the past 60 years. Now, we are certainly on the wane but my poin is that the US ideology and it's way of life is of CENTRAL importance to our predicament regarding the Mid East. Furthermore, Europe is so weak minded the past 50 years that they too simply fall in line with what the US says. Economically, the US is just too important an Allie to lose, and that's the case in a large part of the world,maybe even most of it.

Yes, I'm not saying the US is to blame, but to miss the significance it plays in global power struggles is simply to miss the picture entirely. Just take a look at international law: the US is one of a handful of countries who simply doesn't abide by these laws. They are simply too powerful for anyone to question them.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 09:49:13

Listen, fool. There is a world outside the United States.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-18 09:37:23

CNN a moderate Republican establishment? Hollywood as moderate? Do you live in the real world?

No one would make a movie about Communism being positive because it wasnt. Communism failed. That's the Old Left. The New Left isn't about imposing a totalitarian-like centralized economy. They may argue for more welfare but even they know you need a market economy to make things work. The New Left is arguing on cultural grounds. Feminism, Multiculturalism, LBGT, immigration, etc. And in that sense, the political left has total dominance and controls the narrative. To speak out against these policies is even illegal in some countries because that criticism would be called "hate speech." In other countries, you wont get jailed or fined by the government, but you may very well lose your job and be permanently unemployable.

Kvetching about capitalism as if you are going to replace it with full-blown Communist-style socialism is retarded. It's a failed system. Everyone has capitalism to some degree in the world with the exception of North Korea.

Posted by The Reactionary Tree on 2015-11-18 09:31:54

Zizek has the guts to reject the sacred cow of the neoliberal political discourse - the notion of freedom, i.e. the notion that freedom trumps order and security. Zizek says otherwise, order and security are more important than freedom. Most people outside the Anglosaxon world would agree. Freedom does not put food on their tables, does not provide shelter for them, does not cure diseases, does not protect their crops, does not stop armed thugs from killing and pillaging - in fact it enables these thugs to kill, pillage and rape. For most people outside Anglosaxon culture the notions of order and security as far more meaningful than that of freedom. Zizek captures those sentiments and surely enough enrages Anglosaxon navel gazing liberals who think that everyone in the world thinks like them.

Posted by Wojtek Sokolowski on 2015-11-18 06:47:02

I think the key group you mention (while silently implying another group that of course you fail to mention) is "every corporate HR department." Yah, the HR department is probably somewhat "leftist." Meaning they're probably women and they probably lean more left than their corporate employers.

What's interesting is that you're actually describing a LEAN towards the left in the last 50-60 years. But we have to remember: in America a "lean to the left" post 1950 probably meant you're still only "moderately conservative."

I speak about America bc, well, from 1945 onward we have been the dominant power, both economically and because of economics culturally.

But we can go through each group you named:

1) the media: cnn is a moderate republican establishment. Meaning, they support capitalism just as much as Fox or anyone else, only they do so under the guise of universal cultural norms. In other words: they are the Democratic Party in America which of course tends VERY WELL to the needs of capital. After all: who runs the show? The reason you consider the media "leftist" is bc in Amwrican politics they are about as left as you can go. If you really want to deal with a full on left movement you will look at a Noam Chomsky or a Glenn Greenwald who have both been vehement opponents of CNN and mostly every American media source. (you can even find YouTube videos of both getting into intense arguments with cnn pundits). My basic point on this: the "center" of American politics is so far right that it doesn't even consider a left wing movement. Today Bernie sanders has become somewhat popular and even he is basically a moderate leftists in Europe.

2) Hollywood: the story is almost the same as above: when was the last truly disruptive movie made? Imagine a movie that speaks positively of communism in a direct sense, who on earth would make that movie in America? Hollywood, is similarly very moderate: they want their cash and to give it to the poor but nevertheless they don't question capitalism...

3) Every University: I will agree that more and more liberal arts professors are leftists, even authentic far left wingers. That being said, where is the liberal arts in terms of prowess within the university? They are bottom wrung bc they make no money. Unicersities as a whole are NOT run by meager liberal arts professors: they are run by the businessmen. Thus, although the left has established itself within liberal arts colleges, they are being more and more phased out by economic interests which really drive American universities.

4) Every civil servant: not sure where you get this but civil servants are generally working class folk. Many indeed probably have some moderate views but so what? They have absolutely no say in their government. That's like saying Bradley manning was an important figure in his department... No everything is TOP DOWN, civil servants have no say.

5) NGO's - I don't know the numbers but to say the left "hegemonizes" this aspect seems highly dubious. The reason: who has the most money to spend on this? And what defines NGO? There are so many organizations both right and left I can't say with certainty either way. Maybe u can look that up. I'll give u this I don't know the answer. I certainly know there are PLENTY of right wing NGO's.

Overall, I think it's important to make a distinction that displays how and why the right is dominant in America: Hilary Clinton is a right wing capitalist. This is not a question. She is a staunch capitalist and she will spark up a war with the flick of a finger. Albeit she is moderate on gay rights, abortion, etc social issues, this is what I might call "misdirection." She appeases the crowds with this hand, then behind it all she remains STAUNCHLY a capitalist. This is my problem with the Democratic Party as a whole: they are almost across the board 100% capitalists.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-18 03:08:36

So Laclau and Zizek kept saying, until Zizek pretty much joins in the right-populist camp with this article. However, there is evidence to suggest that they're not correct: Bernie Sanders is the most populist political leader in the USA, he's unambiguously leftist, and there's hasn't been a true populist on the right since-- can't even say, it's been so long. Ross Perot? Surely not since he was a billionaire.

Posted by cgb on 2015-11-17 22:37:42

where have you been the past 50 years? the left has total power and hegemony. They have the media, Hollywood, every university, every NGO, every civil servant, every corporate HR department, etc. every single one of those stands for neo-Marxism in 2015. the left is the establishment.

Posted by The Reactionary Tree on 2015-11-17 22:22:27

Except Europe hasn't had a real "right" for awhile now. It seems that immigrants are starting to spur that, though.

Posted by Wallace Quinn on 2015-11-17 22:10:33

obviously u know 0 muslims

Posted by TwatteringTaha on 2015-11-17 19:54:58

Gosh Zizek gets a lot of flack in the comments! I think half the trouble is that people are automatically equating immigration control with the Right, and unrestricted immigration with the Left. If we look back to before WW2, the designation of these policies was neatly reversed: organised labour movements and governments sympathetic to them in the West were restricting immigration, and the big end of town were pushing for the relaxation of immigration controls and protective tariffs. (look at the White Australia Policy for example; the Labor party doesn't want to own it, but it was theirs from its inception in 1901 though to its abolition by a Centre-Right government led by Menzies). These days working class people objecting to immigration are designated "far right" or even "fascists" even if they are clearly populist movements of working class people without a Racist agenda. It becomes almost comical when white upper class "Socialists" designate black, English-born workers "Fascist" for complaining about continental Europeans moving to London in large numbers. You would have to harbour this misconception to call Zizek Right-wing; indeed he is not. If I take anything from Zizek is that the european Left needs to get over the sillier aspects of Post-modern thought and start calling things by their names, without fear or favour. It's basically impossible to address any serious question of policy without assigning meaning to words (Deconstructionism be damned), and then trying honestly to understand and communicate the relationships between all the parts of the puzzle. Shortcuts, slogans, throw-away dialectics and prejudice of all kinds are basically cholesterol in the arteries of engagement between people and groups. At least Zizek gets us talking in new ways, something that we desperately need right now.

Posted by b allen on 2015-11-17 16:32:02

"First, formulate a minimum set of norms obligatory for everyone that includes religious freedom, protection of individual freedom against group pressure, the rights of women, etc.—without fear that such norms will appear “Eurocentric.”" You see, this is the problem with Western leftists when it comes to uderstanding Islam. EVERYTHING YOU DO PISSES THEM OFF. There is no minimum that a true Muslim can accept when it comes to religious freedom (a true Muslim MUST push constantly for a society governed by Sharia Law), individual freedom (Islam means "submission"--to advocate individual freedom is haram. Homosexuality, even where it is constantly practiced, is haram and punishable by death even in the most liberal Muslim societies), and rights of women (as long as they are content with 2/3rds of what a man gets, if he allows her that). ISIS is NOT a reaction to Western Imperialism. It is a reaction to Western liberalism/and even more so the so-called "radicals" who want to save them. They spit on your help, because they want to die trying to kill you. The very fact that the West opens up their doors to these people makes them hate you more. This is why the most radicalized Muslims are almost always nurtured in the west, and the worst of all are the Western converts. Am I generalizing? No, this is what ISLAM says. Do all MUslims practice this? No, not all Muslims are "good" Muslims. But the problem is that as soon as someoe becomes "upset" or "disaffected" they become suseptible to "discover their roots" and thus become a true Muslim.

Posted by John Cross on 2015-11-17 16:24:24

Well said, sir.

Posted by Mandrews on 2015-11-17 13:26:21

It's very much a psychological capacity. How many refugees you can take before the general population goes full fascist. Much less than what the real capacity is.

Posted by cons on 2015-11-17 13:23:29

Yes and those are clearly the most powerful counties in the West... They have a lot of say in terms of global politics, economics...

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-17 12:55:52

Looks like you haven't been paying attention then:

Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and several other European countries have left-wing governments.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-17 12:37:58

People on the left have a tendency to label their opponents fascists (exemplified by the “Antifa” movement). They often do so haphazardly, referring to anybody who disagrees with international socialism, who disagrees with the abolition of national borders, or who is the slightest bit “patriotic”, “sexist”, “racist” or prejudiced in any other way, as fascists—of course, the people falling under any of these categories probably constitute the majority of western countries’ populations, especially considering how arbitrarily some of these labels might be applied. While perhaps deserving of varying degrees of criticism, many if not most of the people falling into the above named categories are far from fascist—reactionary, perhaps; prejudiced, perhaps; but not everybody non-fascist is enlightened and selfless; that is something we still have to work on... Those who have attempted to analyze and understand fascist ideology as something more than an ultra-capitalist reactionary force are oftentimes dismissed as reactionaries and apologists by the left. This is a grave mistake that the left makes, for fascism is far more than a reaction to socialism, and far from a defense of capitalism. Fascist ideology is all but reactionary (see any of Roger Griffin's controversial work on fascist ideology, including Fascism and Modernity).At the heart of fascism is, similarly to the socialism of the left, a strong opposition to capitalism. Fascists and left wing socialists both present critiques of capitalism, highlighting its injustices in terms of economic inequality and the domination of politics by corporate interests. Both claim to have solutions to these injustices, but their answers are diametrically opposed to one another. The difference between the anti-capitalism of fascists and that of the left is quite simple: while the latter turns outward, towards international solidarity, to overcome corporate exploitation, the former turns inward, towards national, ethnic, or cultural solidarity. History has shown that turning inward invites the arbitrary oppression/exploitation/killing of people you do not identify with as part of your group/nation/tribe.

The danger of fascism is real because capitalism is coming under fire (for good reasons), and turning inward is simply the easier option. As a rule, it is more difficult to work together with and to empathize with people outside of your group. It is a natural tendency to defend your family (and yourself) before others. In order to overcome the evils of capitalism, we need to stand together. Fascists argue that we must stand together as a nation, as a race, or as western culture. They are fucking assholes. Stand together as humans.

You, sir, are a fascist. Get the fuck out of here.

Posted by Mandrews on 2015-11-17 12:23:32

He is a master of "how to say nothing in 10000 words". Living proof of today's neoliberal, postmodern "leftists", who would like to say something, but without risk of being cast aside by ruling right. By asking and answering, he put him self in position of "know it all" only to end up alone in its own soliloquy, which, unfortunately, someone prints, and deliver to us as a digital toilet paper. Point missed: Europe had never had unique values or laws. It was a dream of Enlightenment that got buried under endless bloodshed that lasted for centuries. It is capitalism that changes rules, every time profits starts falling. Its game with terrorism is that it is secondary problem. Lets first secure resources (oil, cheep labor) and then we will deal with consequences, what ever they may be, and we will make a big issue about it to pump up peoples superego, bring nationalism back, and pretend that we actually fighting forces of evil. They managed to drag Putin into it, and from there, sky is a limit.

Posted by Goran Mars on 2015-11-17 11:39:08

hopefully after the collapse and the restoration the elite marxist filth will be hung.

Posted by bruce on 2015-11-17 11:32:08

I didn't realize the left was really in power? The left is only more recently on the rise again.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-17 11:27:09

Rightist populism always precedes leftist populism

Posted by Jackson Heuer on 2015-11-17 11:07:45

The Left quickly pushed in 700 people?

The minister responsible for this is Klaas Dijkhoff from the right wing VVD.

Furthermore, Oranje doesn't have a big population, but it is quite large with open spaces and a big bungalowpark. That's why.

Tristan is another sheep of right wing propagandamedia like De Telegraaf, Geenstijl and Powned (both owned by Telegraaf Media Group).Equivalent to Fox News in America.

Posted by Willem van Oranje on 2015-11-17 10:32:48

Oops. You only read the last line and now you look like a dick

Posted by mickey667 on 2015-11-17 10:21:26

Zizek repeats himself a lot and make weird connections between different events. But I always find him interesting, but maybe less than before.

Posted by klokker1 on 2015-11-17 09:28:39

Looks like you just got rebuked.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-17 09:06:03

he is actually talking about a town, not some fucking village!

Posted by Mashid Mahmood on 2015-11-17 08:19:11

I am from the Netherlands. There is a little village called "Oranje"- Drenthe Province. Pop. 150. Number of migrants: 700. When they protested the Left quickly pushed in 700 more. Pop. 150. Number of immigrants: 1400.

So shut the fuck up, leftist.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-17 07:46:01

Hahaha it seems to me that Zizek is desperate for the left to stay in power.

Posted by Tristan van Oosten on 2015-11-17 07:44:43

This guy isn´t the brightest crayon in the box.

Posted by Chris Capps-Schubert on 2015-11-17 05:32:02

Zizek's use of the scene from Malcolm X is emblematic of his approach to the truth in this entire essay.

The scene in which Malcolm rejects the help of a young white girl is taken directly from Malcolm's Autobiography. It is important specifically *because Malcolm regretted it*, because his later experiences convinced him that this kind of attitude was the precise opposite of what was needed to actually win the struggle. In other words, Zizek has related half an anecdote, leaving out the conclusion so that it would appear to support his reactionary agenda.

The rest of the essay is pretty much like that: half-truths mixed with outright nonsense in the service of the most reactionary of politics. The two biggest fabrications are the ones that are simply taken for granted:1) That refugees, who apparently form an essentialized monoculture, "hate our values."2) That democracy, freedom, equality, etc. are somehow "Western" values and not something people the world over have fought for.In this way, Zizek manages to pretend to be an internationalist while affirming the logic of Clash of Civilizations pseudoscience.

Reactionary clowns like Zizek are particularly dangerous because they take elements of the real (such as the inability of identity politics to deal with the situation) and combine them with precisely the sort of propaganda that the system requires.

Posted by Jonas Kyratzes on 2015-11-17 04:58:20

The parallel you're drawing is obviously faulty, not to mention that "history is the history of migration" can easily be altered to say "history is the history of (say) rape and murder", meaning "stick your head up your arse and keep calm, it's just the natural order of things". Whether you're actually able to comprehend what Zizek is getting at here, a brief period of meditation should allow you to see how keeping quiet and inactive is the worst mistake one can make in any situation.

Posted by +- on 2015-11-17 04:33:41

I'm from Germany, and have not remotely seen any town taking up refugees 5-10 times their actual population. If that was the case, you'd be hearing it all over the media! Back your arguments with facts and evidence, and sometimes not saying anything is the best option, my friend.

Posted by Mashid Mahmood on 2015-11-17 04:33:27

In Latin America, we received millions of western Europeans in the first half of the 20th century. It completely changed our society in bad and good ways. This is what human history is, the history of migration and change. This article is nonsense conservative bullshit. Goodbye Zizek.

Posted by jsaturno on 2015-11-17 02:24:22

Go back to /pol/

Posted by mfr on 2015-11-16 23:56:51

Sounds like Zizek is just a spoiled left wing nut. Grow up, times have changed, Tito is dead. The only way to fight the money hungry corporations is though national spirit. It failed once before, but as one general said to Napoleon on the verge of his first battle loss, "This battle is completely lost, but there is time to win another". Europe and the West will rise again, so the WORLD will be and can be a better place. Hey, without Tesla, were would we all be? PS-Tesla loved God, King and Country. And Draza!

Posted by Momo Paragini on 2015-11-16 23:36:15

holy shit did you even read the article?

Posted by person on 2015-11-16 23:31:00

Which town in germany "has been forced to take 5-10 times their original population in refugees"? This is propaganda from pegida and from nazis. There are no "islamic majorities" and there is no "rape capital". These are lies. This comment is racist.

Posted by Brian Janssen on 2015-11-16 22:42:41

Many towns in germany are often being forced to take 5-10 times their original population in refugees

No other people on earth would ever stand for this, nor should they have to.

Then factor in the huge birthrates of these migrants and the fact that these migrants will never stop coming and we find that numerous european countries will have islamic majorities within mere decades.

Of course, this was the plan all along. It's a feature, not a bug. And leftists will bludgeon any native european who dares speak against their ongoing ethnocide.

"While I agree that refugees have to learn to accept a pluralistic society as a minimum, there isn´t a statistically significant increase in religiously motivated crime coming from refugees necessariy"

Muslims have turned sweden into the rape capital of the west and have been targetting almost exclusively non-muslim women, as was the case with the thousands of children raped by muslims in the UK in places like Rotherham, Sheffield and many others.. At this stage, leftists are being flat-out complicit in the rape of women and children on a massive scale.

All in the name of "tolerance"

Posted by Jason Alexander on 2015-11-16 21:34:47

"Emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal-democratic procedures of legitimization. No, people quite often do NOT know what they want, or do not want what they know, or they simply want the wrong thing. There is no simple shortcut here."

Things leftists hate in 2015: Democracy, free speech, the working class, not having oppressive shariah law imposed on the west. VERY progressive.

Posted by Jason Alexander on 2015-11-16 21:28:54

Care to explain? I'll need a specific quotation and then an exegesis.

Thanks I'll be waiting and I will respond immedietely.

Posted by Bueno Devine Burquez on 2015-11-16 20:25:48

Already reading it, this thing about "capacities of different countries", ticks me off. While I agree the burden of the humanitarian crisis caused by refugees should be distributed equitably throughout the EU, this whole idea that there is such a "Flood" that would overwhelm Europe is ludicrous. Europe could absorb all of Syria and most of Northern Africa (besides Egypt) and the increase in population as a whole would be in the single digit %´s for population increase. PEGIDA types are arguing about the burden of a few hundred thousand in a country of 80 million saying "the boat is full". Just absurd, move to Jordan and than you can complain about being overrun by refugees. While I agree that refugees have to learn to accept a pluralistic society as a minimum, there isn´t a statistically significant increase in religiously motivated crime coming from refugees necessarily (yes other crimes such as selling drugs because they´re often broke and desperate and cannot legally/ have trouble obtaining employment). The reasoning behind this is nebulous and somewhat prejudice. Yes parts of the middle east are repressive, some places like Beirut or Istanbul are more metropolitan than he realizes, and that the customs of the majority of people there is incompatible with western pluralism says a lot about both his preconceptions of the middle east and fails to recognize people´s ability to adapt to a new home under safer and less repressive circumstances. If people cannot accept pluralism than of course they are welcome to seek refuge somewhere else. If people commit crimes they may be subjected to deportation or be subject to prosecution, its that simple. Next supporting pluralism is inherently diametrically opposed to supporting a sharia state advocated by many Islamic fundamentalists, it implies secularism and that people may believe what they wish but cannot force that belief upon other people through the power of the state or various other kinds of leverage. "How many of Germany´s refugees want to be integrated"? Really? Is that a serious question? How many people want to move to Bavaria out of desperation and have Bavarian ideals forced upon them. Fuck that. What Zizek ignores is the fact with hundreds of historical precedents that longterm often multigenerational exposure to a culture is what leads to integration within the social fabric of the host nation.

Posted by Chris Capps-Schubert on 2015-11-16 17:22:15

Sounds to me like he's a leftist also trying to be a realist...

Posted by Dusty Cohen on 2015-11-16 16:19:59

Just trolling here or did you just not bother to think while you were reading?

Posted by TimW on 2015-11-16 13:05:19

Zizek makes an ass of himself here. Using leftist jargon, he aligns himself with the right wing of the West.